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THE THRUSH AND THE JAY 



Many of the poems in this volume have already appeared 
in The Nation and of the prose sketches in that review and 
in The New Statesman. 



THE 

THRUSH AND THE JAY 

/ 



SYLVIA LYND 

Author of " The Chorus''' 



NEW YORK 

E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY 

1917 






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TO YOU 
MY DEAR ROBERT LYND 



^^/^jjx /^ 






CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Barber's First Brother 7 

A Young Farmer to an Old Tune .... 12 

Prose: Eat, Drink, AND BE Merry .... 14 

To MY Children, S. and B. J 24 

A Sussex Child 27 

Prose: A DAY IN TOWN 29 

The Fair Persian 40 

Prose: The Guilty Passion 46 

A Holy Man in the Desiert 54 

Prose : The Sixth Act 57 

Helas ! 65 

Hunting Song 66 

Prose : The INTRUDER 68 

A Bathe one Sunday 77 

Prose: OuT OF THE Wind 80 

"The World is a Bridge" 89 



vi Contents 

PAGE 

Prose: ADVERSARIES 9^ 

Miss Daly's 102 

Prose: ROMAUNT DE LA Rose 106 

KiNSALE 116 

Evening Music 118 

The Attic Room 119 

Prose: VENGEANCE 121 

The Mower 127 

Prose: WORTH THE MONEV 1 29 

To M. M. R i3f> 

The Daisty Field 137 

Prose: GETTING THE Sack 139 

A Freed Spirit 148 

The Small Daughter 151 

Prose: THE Mulberry Bush 153 

Bethlehem 163 

This and This 165 



THE THRUSH AND THE JAY 

THE BARBER'S FIRST BROTHER 

Know, O Prince of the Faithful, that the first (who 
was named El-Bakbuk) . . . practised the art 
of a tailor in Baghdad. 

I. 

The window is round. 
The sky is blue. 
Two doves sit still 
On the window-sill; 
With murmurous sound 
They coo and coo. 

The window is high 
Above the ground, 
I get no sight 
By day or night, 
But the blue sky 
Empty and round. 



The Thrush and the Jay 



II. 

I peeped through the lattice 

And saw my love passing. 

How happy the companions 

With whom he went laughing! 

How happy the people 

That walked the same street! 

How happy the stones 

That were pressed by his feet! 

Though I should sit watching 

A year and a day 

How small Is the chance 

He will come the same way I 

Oh, what Is my hope 

In the maze of the hours? 

What hope has one flower 

In a garden of flowers? 

III. 

Could I follow my thought 
I should find out the place 
Where, under cool trees, 
My love takes his ease, 
Could I follow my thought 
I should look on his face. 



The Barber's First Brother 



Do I stay, do I go, 
Do I waken or sleep, 
Do I ripen and rot 
Like a fruit tasted not, 
He will care not nor know 
Though I wither and weep. 



IV. 

I press to the lattice 
My black brilliant eye. 
To see in the sunlight 
My true love go by. 
As a twig of the willow 
He is graceful and sleek, 
He has a round mole 
On the moon of his cheek; 
His lips are of scarlet. 
Of honey his mouth. 
The perfume he brings 
Is a wind of the south. 
He sees not, he turns not, 
Though close I am pressed, 
Till the shape of the lattice 
Is marked on my breast. 



lo The Thrush and the Jay 

V. 

Turn, my love, and you will see 
Hair more black than ebony. 
Parted lips, more crimson far 
Than roses of Damascus are. 
Arched eyebrows, fringed eyes. 
Like the maids of Paradise, 
Swooning am I, all outspread. 
Fallen flower with petals shed! 



VI. 

I stretched forth my hand 

To feed my dove 

Circling out there 

In the blue air. 

Tip-toe did I stand. 

And I thought of my love. 

It was a strange thing 
I did not understand. 
Someone caught and kissed 
My hand and my wrist — 
While I stood wondering 
Someone kissed my hand! 



The Barber's First Brother n 

VII. 

I sent to the tailor 
Who stitches and stitches 
A piece of yellow satin 
To make me new breeches, 
A piece of yellow satin, 
And of red flowered silk. 
For a jacket to cover 
My sides white as milk. 
I know a small door, 
And I know a small stair. 
And I know a good hour 
When my father's at prayer, 
And I know a wise woman 
Is honest and old. 
Has a necklace of pearls, 
And a purse full of gold. 



A YOUNG FARMER TO AN OLD TUNE 

The bearded barley, it grows so high, 
When the wind comes from the South; 
And it whispers, whispers close to my ear 
With the slow, soft voice of my darling : 
Along the edge of the field I lie. 
And chew young grasses in my mouth. 
Oh, it brings the sweetest time of the year, 
The wind that shakes the barley. 



'Tis good to stretch, and to watch the sky, 
While waiting for my dear; 
The birds are moving among the corn. 
The finch, the crow, and the starling : 
A thousand times I think she is nigh, 
Tho' 'tis but rustling stalks I hear. 
Oh, she's the wind of the summer morn, 
The wind that shakes the barley. 



A Young Farmer to an Old Tune 13 

The barley bends when the wind comes by 

With the swish of silken dresses, 

The rippling fields, far off and near, 

Are laughing like my darling; 

I turn my head, and she is nigh 

To orreet me with caresses. 

Oh, it brings the sweetest time of the year — 

The wind that shakes the barley. 



EAT, DRINK, AND BE MERRY 

In her dark green cashmere frock she appeared 
in the midst of the other children hke a moor-hen 
among saiHng white-robed swans. But, unhke the 
moor-hen, she had not scarlet feet as a compensa- 
tion. All round her she heard clear voices eager 
to reveal what their owners had discovered : 

" Why, she hasn't a party dress ! That little 
girl hasn't a party dress! " 

She heard them with an amiable detachment, for 
she was very young. Her sister's hand, however, 
suddenly held hers tightly, and she was led up to 
the hostess. 

" She didn't like being left out," her sister said, 
" so mother said might I bring her too.-* " 

And there she was. 

Then somebody began playing the piano, and 
all the grown-up people rushed about calling out 
to one another, " There are twenty-five — no, there 
are twenty-six," until they had got a long line of 



Eat^ Drink, and be Merry 15 

chairs into the middle of the room, and all the 
children began running round them. She went 
and ran round them too. All at once the music 
stopped, and the other children scrambled into the 
chairs and sat in them. She was left standing out 
on the floor with a little girl in pink. Someone 
began to shout "There's one chair left! there's 
one chair left! Quick, Margherita, run, run!" 
And the little girl in pink was seized by some big 
hand and rushed up the room into the vacant chair. 
After that someone else came and took her by the 
hand and led her away from the others, and put 
her near the wall and said : *' You're out." It was 
like having been naughty. The music began again, 
and the other boys and girls went on running round 
the chairs, and each time the music stopped one or 
other of them was said to be " out." This went 
on until only two big girls were left. They were 
sisters, and the one with spectacles sat the other 
one on to the floor. 

Then someone said, " Now we'll have dumb- 
crambo to make us cool "; and again a hand came 
and moved her, and a voice said, " Out of the 
way, little girl," and " This game is too * old ' for 
you." This time she found a chair with padded 
arms, and she climbed into it and sat enthroned 
with her legs straight out before her, until an old 



1 6 The Thrush and the Jay 

lady with a stick and teeth that snapped funnily in 
front came and said, " You are a very little girl 
to have such a big chair! " and she was lifted out 
of it, and the old lady sat down in her stead, and 
she had to stand near the wall again for a long, 
long time. Then the door was flung open, and 
everyone cried "Tea, tea!" And the other 
children began jumping up and down, and she 
began to jump up and down with them. They all 
trooped into another room, and her sister found 
her and took her by the hand again; but they were 
soon separated, and she was seated up to the table 
on a chair that was much too low. 

The table was a glorious sight. It was covered 
with all sorts of things that she wanted at once to 
eat. In the centre was a great white cake, with 
candles round it and tiny flags all over the top. 
There were crackers, too, lying about between the 
plates, and the other children were looking at them 
and shaking them and wondering what was inside, 
and all talking at once. " Look, this one has a 
clown on ! Look, this one has a horseshoe ! Look, 
this one has a bunch of flowers! " And a little 
boy said, " I'm not allowed to eat cream things "; 
and a little girl said, " Oh, 1 may, if they're fresh ! " 
Then the little boy said proudly, " / mayn't eat 
nuts." Then another boy said very shrilly, " I 



Eaty Drink, and he Merry 17 

mayn't eat Turkish delight." And so on, until the 
real business of tea began. 

With her wide eyes scarcely higher than the 
level of the table, she sat and longed for things. 
She felt she wanted to taste all the deliciousness 
that she could see, but before she had left her own 
house she had promised to take what was offered 
her and say " Thank you "; and some of the things 
she most wanted never came her way at all. She 
got bread and butter to begin with, and then brown 
bread and butter, which was worse, and then a 
queen cake. None of the pink and white biscuits, 
or even the sponge fingers, came near her, and 
once when the chocolate cakes were next door but 
one, a slim hand, with bright nails and many 
sparkling rings, pounced talon-like upon the plate 
and bore it away right out of her view. There 
was " skin " in her milk too, and there was no 
spoon with which to fish it out. She sat still at 
last, with the dry, uneaten half of the queen cake 
on the plate before her, and it was with difficulty 
that she kept the tears from overflowing her eyes. 

And now they were cutting the Christmas cake, 
such splendid slices, coated with white sugar from 
bottom to top. Then a grown-up voice said : 
" Oh, those slices are much too big. They'll never 
get through those! " And they took the knife 

B 



1 8 The Thrush and the Jay 

again and cut all the slices in halves horizontally, 
so that some were nearly all sugar and some had 
hardly any sugar at all. Then they handed them 
round. She watched them coming towards her 
down the table. Some of the children took the 
top pieces with all the sugar; a few took the lower 
pieces that had hardly any. She hoped and hoped 
that one of the top pieces would come to her; but 
the girl next to her took the sugary bit, and she 
felt she must take the bit without the sugar, and 
the plate passed on. 

After that her impressions were a confusion of 
noises, in which the choking and carrying out into 
the hall of a small boy in a sailor suit and the 
pulling of the crackers were inextricably tangled. 
She found the crackers too frightening to pull her- 
self, much as she longed for their contents, and she 
could not bring herself to imitate a neighbour with 
a round comb, who seized a great many and tore 
them open single-handed, saying, "This is what 
/ do." She felt that to be a very naughty little 
girl. So she covered her own ears with her hands 
to shut out the noise, until one of the children ran 
to her and put a tall paper cap on her head, and 
said, "Now you're a dunce!" She was vexed 
at that, and snatched the cap off and threw it on 
the ground. 



Eat, Drink, and be Merry 19 

After that they were told to wait for the Christ- 
mas tree. They passed the time in an eager babble 
of conversation, showing one another the treasures 
they had found in the crackers (the caps they 
rather despised), the india-rubber faces that squinted 
and pushed out their tongues, the little horses, the 
bracelets, the whistles, the puzzles, the compasses. 
One of the little girls asked her what she had got, 
and when she opened her hand and showed a bunch 
of flowers that came only from the outside of a 
cracker, the little girl was openly scornful. Gazing 
down at her from a superior height, she propounded 
the following questions : 

'* Have you got a scrap-book } " 

" What church do you go to,'' " 

"What chapel, then.? " 

" Don't you go at all, then } " 

*' How many servants do you keep.'' " 

Satisfied as to these points, another group 
received her attention, and she was soon asking 
them what size of shoes they took, and why their 
mothers allowed them to have short sleeves to 
their party frocks. 

And then they went back into the drawing-room 
for the Christmas tree. It seemed immensely tall, 
as tall as any tree that ever grew in a forest. It 
blazed with countless flames and globes and stars 

B 2 



20 The Thrush and the Jay 

and festoons of brightness. Father Christmas 
himself was there in a red, furred gown powdered 
over with snow, and the little girl who had torn 
open the crackers screamed and screamed, and had 
to be taken home. All the time people were 
cutting presents ofF the tree and handing them to 
Father Christmas to give to the children, and when 
they were all cut ofF someone called out, " Has 
everyone got a present.'' " and she found herself 
pushed forward close to the tall tree as a little girl 
with none. So Father Christmas gave her a parcel 
too, and then the grown-up people began blowing 
out the candles on the tree, and one little boy ran to 
Father Christmas and cried, *' Why, it's Uncle 
Arthur ! I know it's Uncle Arthur. I know him 
by his socks! " And Father Christmas pushed 
back his hood and unhooked his beard, and the 
little boy wore it for the rest of the evening. 

Then the lights were turned on in the room 
again, and they were all able to examine their 
presents. There were dogs that jumped, and eg^s 
that contained lots and lots of little eggs, and paint 
boxes, and dolls, and engines, and monkeys, and 
tea-sets, and all kinds of things. Her present was 
a clockwork spider that was joined to a fly by a 
piece of string. She was looking at it when Father 
Christmas came up. He was quite pleasant with- 



Eat, Drink, and be Merry 21 

out his beard, and he said, " Hullo, what have you 
got?" She handed up the toy to him, and he 
examined it critically. She stood and gazed at 
him with steady, trustful eyes. Just then their 
hostess passed near them, and he called out, " I 
say, how does this work.^" The hostess looked 
for a moment and her face became pink. 

"That, oh, that's broken! " she said quickjy, 
and turned away. 

Father Christmas almost looked embarrassed too, 
and he said, " I'm afraid this spider has caught 
cold. He can't run up the string any more," and 
then, more cheerfully, " Suppose we dance 
instead.'' " 

So she danced with Father Christmas until she 
was " fetched," and, secure in gaiters, woolly 
gloves and scarf, was escorted home safely to her 
mother. 

"And was it a nice party.'' " She had not con- 
sidered that idea before, but, of ccAirse, she was 
sure that it was. It was with astonishment that 
she heard her sister's voice, taut with suppressed 
tears : " They said she hadn't a party dress! " She 
had forgotten all about that. 

It, Ht * * 

And was it a nice party.'' Why, surely it was. 



22 The Thrush and the Jay 

She did not doubt it then, and why should she 
feel now as she did not feel a score (at least) of 
years ago? Ought she not instead to sympathise 
rather with the hostess who, by her presence in 
dowdy everyday clothes, was torn who knows from 
what garden of illusion, and forced, moreover, to 
add to the tea table an "odd" cup, and possibly 
to introduce a chair out of the kitchen ? Well, 
if she cannot entirely sympathise, she can forgive 
— at least, she thinks she can; but this is what 
she says : 

If in the next world there is no other candidate 
for the post, she will hold up her hand and say, 
" Please may I be the Patron of the Christmas 
Parties?" She will go to all the parties, even 
when they happen on the same day. She will wear 
no halo, but a rather smart hat, and it is possible, 
if she has her way, that the pearls in her ears will 
be the biggest in the room. At tea she will stand 
behind the chairs of all the children who have no 
grey-coated nurse or velvet mother to look after 
them, and she will say into each ear, " Are you 
high enough, darling one? " and if they are not 
she will fetch them cushions or books to sit on. 
She will see that all the cups are filled, and she 
will put the brown bread and butter away on the 
sideboard, and when the cakes or the animal biscuits 



Eaty Drink ^ and he Merry 23 

come round she will point to the one they want 
with " I say, have that one," or " Have a rabbit," 
or "Have a swan; you had a squirrel last time." 
As to the Christmas cake, I doubt if there will be 
any halving of slices while she is in the room; 
but if there is, she will carry round the plate her- 
self and say, " Please do take the sugary bit for 
goodness' sake! " 



TO MY CHILDREN, S. AND B. J. 

Beloveds, when you smile at me, 

It is the birthday of my soul, 

It is the day of blossoming; — - 

The day of welcome to the sun 

When lambs do play and birds do sing. 

When flowers blow and glad streams run. 

Beloveds, when you smile at me. 

Then am I healed and made whole. 

It is the day of blossoming, 

It is the birthday of my soul. 

The God who loves the Seraphim 
Will guard my lambs of snowy fleece. 
Will guard my little singing birds; — 
Will make them gentle, make them good. 
Will fill their hearts with merry words. 
With valour, and with hardihood. 
The God who loves the Seraphim 
Will make a mighty shield of peace 
To guard my little singing birds. 
My little lambs of snowy fleece. 



To My Children, S. and B. J. 25 

And I will travel all the way 
That you may enter Paradise; 
May enter by the pearly gate 
The meadows of the blessed sea. 
The way that is both long and strait 
We'll shorten with good company. 
And I must travel all the way 
Among the simple and the wise 
That enter by the pearly gate, 
That enter into Paradise. 



I that should lead, so will be led 

By small strong hands and wayward feet. 

Because they must not fare forlorn. 

And if I go not who will keep 

Your lips from poison, hands from thorn ? 

And who will lay you down to sleep } 

I that should lead, so will be led 

By careless bonds that are most sweet; 

Because they must not fare forlorn, 

The small strong hands, the wayward feet. 



Under the hawthorns we will play, 
(As you play now upon the grass). 



26 The Thrush and the Jay 

And see new wonders everywhere; — 
And all the flowers, like stars, will shine, 
And you shall wear them in your hair, 
And I will wear some, too, in mine. 
Under the hawthorns we will play. 
And watch the stately angels pass. 
And see new wonders everywhere — 
As you play now upon the grass. 



A SUSSEX CHILD 

A LITTLE wood of becch trees made, 

A flitting light, a flitting shade, 

Wood sorrels bright 

For lips' delight. 

And boughs low hung 

To swing among. 

Beyond, a hill that naked lies 
Asleep, beneath the changing skies, 
And gentle sheep 
Faint converse keep, 
To the soft knell 
Of the wether's bell. 

There you may leap and shout and race. 

Or breathlessly lie on your face 

And watch the sea. 

And clouds that flee, 

And larks that shrill 

All about the hill. 



28 The Thrush and the Jay 

And carts that crawl from far below, 
And climb the white road creaking slow;- 
Or you fly a kite 
If the wind is right, 
And you know the way, 
And it's a holiday. 



A DAY IN TOWN. 

Harold had an influenza cold. It was very- 
vexatious for him to be laid up just then, when 
they were moving. He was sure himself that he 
had got it standing about in draughts while he told 
the men where to put the things. Her part had 
been to sit quietly on a packing-case and not get 
in the way, and like a little mouse so had she sat. 
Harold almost seemed to resent that now. Still, he 
couldn't deny that he had made the sound repre- 
sented by "Tush, tush!" when she had come to 
him with his hat in her hand. Of course it was at 
an anxious moment. He was deciding where the 
Sheraton bookcase should go. Well, now he was 
laid up. 

As she settled herself in the corner seat of the 
ladies' carriage with her back to the engine 
(Harold's instructions) she realised that this was the 
first time she had ever journeyed alone, almost the 
first time she had been alone in her life. Her child- 



30 The Thrush and the Jay 

hood, looked back upon, seemed to have been 
trotted through with her small hand placed con- 
fidingly in a large one, her girlhood in walking 
" double file " with other girls in a variety of coats 
and skirts and a monotony of sailor-hats with the 
school riband on them, or in company with mother 
or governess avoiding the perils between Porchester 
Gardens and Baker Street, where, unaccompanied, 
"anything might happen." From her mother's 
care she had gone to the care of Harold. Perhaps 
" charge " would be a more accurate word. There 
was something, she was forced to admit, overtight 
in Harold's grip of her. It was less suggestive of a 
courier than of a constable. Yes, that was it : she 
had been given in charge. 

Harold was fifteen years older than she. When 
she had met him he was not a young man, but a 
young bachelor; there is an enormous gulf between 
the two — and she sometimes wondered if he had 
ever got over it. Harold was an architect and he 
knew at least twenty times more about the arrange- 
ment of a house than she did. Harold must have 
air, and so they lived in the country. Harold did 
not care for going out in the evening or, indeed, for 
any definite pleasure. His father, the distinguished 
Don, had written a book on the Subjunctive Mood, 
and in the subjunctive mood they seemed to live. 



A Day in Town 



move, and have their being. Time hung a little 
heavy sometimes. 

The train was slowing down towards Victoria. 
She hoped Harold's fire was being kept up properly. 
A porter swung open the carriage door. 

" Any luggage, miss .^" 

She beamed at him. 

" No, thank you." 

It gave her a tiny shock of pleasure to be called 
*'Miss" again. Everywhere that she went with 
Harold she was addressed as " Madam." That 
word had always made her feel overwhelmed and 
shy, and the first pride of it was over now. She 
felt very light and free as she stepped on to the 
platform. She held up her head. She was a 
slender, pale, elegant young woman, not very tall, 
with cloudy and appealing blue eyes. In her 
simple fawn-coloured travelling clothes and plain 
hat she looked even younger and more unsophis- 
ticated than she was. She took out the paper 
Harold had given her and re-read her instructions. 

" Corner, back engine, ladies' carriage." (That 
was done.) 

" One dozen pure linen handkerchiefs, Army 
and Navy Stores." (These colds always went so 
badly to his head. They were the only things that 
did.) 



32 The Thrush and the Jay 

" Taxicab to Cork Street Hotel " (where they 
had stayed once together) " for lunch. 

" Match curtains in Regent Street. Pay for 
Cousin Dora's wedding present." (He had selected 
two pendants provisionally for Dora's final 
decision.) 

" Tea at Cork Street Hotel. 

" Home by the ^.c^. 

" Take care of the crossine;s." 

Moreover, she was to take taxicabs at every 
available spot and bid the driver to drive carefully. 
Her purse bulged with money. Harold was very 
decent at times. She walked up the platform. 

The handkerchiefs were the first things to be got. 

" And not to leave the parcel behind me any- 
where," she repeated the parting words. 

Outside the station a woman was selling violets. 
" Sixpence to you, miss." She bought a large 
bunch and fastened them into her coat — only then 
did she remember that Harold never allowed her 
to buy flowers in the street. Goodness knew where 
they had been! Curiously enough, the street was 
for her the place where they seemed most insist- 
ently attractive. Well, she had bought them now. 
She need not wear them going home. 

" I want some handkerchiefs for a gentleman, 
please." 



A Day in Town 33 

"Yes, madam; what kind of handkerchiefs?" 

She consulted her hst. 

" Pure linen handkerchiefs, if you please." 

Boxes were shown her. "Or this is very nice 
if it is for a present, madam .''" 

No, it was not for a present. It was for a bad 
cold. Yes, those would do and she would take 
them with her. 

As she wrapped the parcel the girl behind the 
counter hoped that the young gentleman would 
soon be better. 

" Indeed, yes, so do I. You see, it's my 
husband." 

Was it possible that Madam was married ? Well, 
the girl behind the counter would never have 
believed that ! 

" Madam " was unreasonably glad. 

Was it unkind to Harold not to wish his exis- 
tence to be printed all over her ^ 

Outside the stores she hailed a taxicab. 

"And drive slowly, please," she said dutifully; 
but then, because it was so absurd to make the man 
think one was afraid when one wasn't, she added : 
" Because I want to look at the shops." 

She did want to look at the shops. All the same, 
she felt a little guilty towards Harold. He had 
meant her to have taught that one taximan at least 



34 The Thrush and the Jay 

that there is for some of us a higher sense of public 
duty than is compatible with scorching through the 
streets. It struck her that ff Harold were to be run 
over at any time, he would be even more shocked 
than hurt. She reached the hotel in Cork Street, 
and paid, with an addition, her fare. 

" Thank you, miss," said the driver. 

It was very pleasant. 

For lunch she had a sole with mousseline sauce, 
a cutlet and peas, apricots and junket — ^just the 
sort of meal she could have had at home. That was 
the worst of Harold : he did like things to be the 
same. 

She straightened her hat and sallied out again. 
So far the day had been uneventful. 

" Shall I call a taxi, miss .^" asked the porter, with 
the voice of conscience. 

" No, thank you," she said distinctly. " I shall 
walk." 

She walked all the way up Piccadilly and all the 
v/ay round Regent Street. The air was filled with 
sun, the pavement with strolling women in spring 
hats. She consulted her paper again. It said : 
" Match curtains." She found the shop and 
pushed through swing doors into its glowing, 
many-coloured, chintz-hung recesses. She was 
greeted by a young man whose baptismal name 
could only have been " Hyacinth." 



A Day in Town 35 

She produced her pattern ; he produced a book of 
patterns, too. They found the one Harold wanted 
in the book; but, oh, incredible, that design was no 
longer in stock ! It was rather staggering. 

" Could I perhaps find you something somewhat 
similar.'"' asked the beautiful young man. 

" I'm afraid I can hardly decide about another. 
You see, these curtains are for my husband's study. 
If it was any other room — -but I don't think I could 
even then." 

" If you will leave me the pattern, madam, I will 
ascertain what we have at the warehouse and let you 
know." 

The blue eyes gazed into his. 

*' But, you see, I promised I would look at the 
stuff myself " Her voice trailed helplessly. 

" If you care to wait, madam, I will telephone to 
the warehouse and ascertain." 

She waited. He returned, suave, blond, and 
graceful. 

Yes, the material was in stock. He had sent for 
some. It would be here — he consulted the watch 
on his wrist — in forty-five minutes. She thanked 
him; she would call again. This parcel, was it 
hers? Why, yes, it was! She thanked him. She 
must not forget the handkerchiefs. That would be 
dreadful. 

c 2 



36 The Thrush and the Jay 

Dora's pendant was next on her list. 

She would soon see about that. She saw it 
packed into a green cardboard box, with the card : 

" Every good wish from Mr. and Mrs. " on 

it, and addressed and stamped and ready to be sent 
off. 

Then she strolled into the street again. Forty- 
five minutes. Hyacinth had said. She had another 
twenty yet to pass. Her eye roved to the windows. 
She decided to buy a hat; she felt suddenly frumpish 
in her old one. 

A girl with a powdered nose attended her. 

" Has madam any particular choice as to 
colour.'"' 

Madam had none. She just wanted, she con- 
fided suddenly, something very pretty and be- 
coming. 

They tried on several hats, all of which, irrespec- 
tive of their merits, the girl pronounced to be 
charming. Then at last from the v/indow she with- 
drew a little black gauzy one with a single large 
white rose in it. 

" A very pretty thing and a design that will be 
worn all the summer." 

They tried it on. Yes, it was irresistible. 

" But the question is whether this isn't too 
young.'' Does it make me look a married 
woman?" 



A Day in Town 37 

"Oh, no, madam; indeed it doesn't," said the 
white-nosed girl; " but then you are not, are you?" 

" I am indeed." 

Exclamations, wonderings ! At the end of them, 
of course, she bought the hat. 

She turned again to the shop of the cretonnes. 
Hyacinth was busy with an old lady among the arc 
serges. It was tiresome of him. 

The shopwalker approached her. 

" Shall I jfind someone else to serve you, madam, 
or would you rather — wait.^" 

She said she would wait, and then to her horror, 
before his significant smile, she found herself blush- 
ing, actually blushing, about a young man in a 
shop! What was the matter with her.^* What 
would Harold think "^ That wouldn't bear con- 
sidering at all. She steadied herself. 

Yes, the material had come. Languidly did 
Hyacinth cut the strings of the parcel. He hoped 
she had not been kept waiting too long. 

" Oh, no," she smiled. " I've been buying a 
hat." 

So he saw, he said. They laughed together. 

With what graceful nonchalance Hyacinth twit- 
tered his scissors! How swiftly he mastered the 
brown paper ! How firm his knots were ! Never, 
in all her life, should she be as capable as that. 



38 The Thrush and the Jay 

In the street again she saw what time it was — 
past four o'clock ! No time for tea at that old hotel. 
She did not want to eat Genoa cake, in any case; 
who, save in the last necessity, ever did? She 
found a tea-shop and ate an eclair and another cake 
shaped like a mushroom and a small brown frilled 
one that was flavoured with liqueur. Catching 
sight of herself in a mirror on her way to the door, 
she admitted that Harold would not like the hat. 
It made her too obviously pretty. " Cheap," he 
called it. He liked her to be just not plain. She 
walked to the Circus and waited for a 'bus. Harold 
was very decent about money; still, the hat was an 
extravagance, especially as she might never be let 
wear it again. So she stood slim and poised with 
the large bag containing her old hat in her hand, 
and the violets at her breast, looking, she told 
herself gaily, like a little milliner. The 'bus sidled 
to the edge of the pavement and she got into it. 
At the same moment she realised that she had just 
time for her train, and that she had lost the hand- 
kerchiefs. As the 'bus charged the traffic she 
wondered with flickering anxiety where she had 
left them. She had meant to be so careful. 
What would Harold say.-* He would never for- 
give her. He would feel he had been forgotten : 
mat she had gone buying herself hats when he was 



A Day in Town 39 

suffering. It had a look of the grossest negligence. 
He would never believe that she had thought of 
him all day, as she had in one way or another. Oh, 
dear! 

Once in the train, she dropped the violets out of 
the window and put on her original hat. The new 
one she would reserve for a more propitious occa- 
sion. She sighed softly as she stepped out of the 
station fly and rang at her front door. (Only 
Harold had a key. She might lose one. He was 
quite right.) 

She put down her parcels on the hall table, they 
were heavy as lead. A knife was brought from the 
kitchen, and she began to cut ruefully through the 
fair string of Hyacinth's lattice-work. 

" How has the master been .^" 

" Much the same, I think, ma'am." 

She spread out the cretonne. In the midst of its 
exotic folds was a small parcel — the handkerchiefs, 
the pure linen handkerchiefs ! Hyacinth had saved 
her. Dear Hyacinth! Without a word, without 
the least puckering of an eyebrow ! There was tact, 
resource, sympathy, understanding! 

She ran upstairs with a laugh. 



THE FAIR PERSIAN 

(Then Enis-el-J alls took the Lute. 

*' // she sing not well^ O Ja'far^^'' said the Kalifeh, 

" / will have her^ and all who listen to her, 

crucified.^^) 

I. 

Wine has set music to my tongue, 

I will sing, O my beloved, I will sing, 

I will praise the time that we were young 

And dwelt in your father's house in pleasure : — 

This is no sorrowful measure. 

Yet the tears to my eyelids spring, 

And I weep ere the song has been sung. 

Music has stirred wisdom in my breast, 

It rises in my throat and takes wing, 

I know that the present time is best. 

And lament not for the days that are over : — 

Have I not you, O my lover. 

You unsurpassed by anything. 

Have I not love for my guest ? 



The Fair Persian 41 

11. 

They took what you gave 

And went away, 
Only I, your slave, 

Was left on a day, 

I, and the wind crying 

Between floor and rafter, 
Desolate sighing 

In the house of laughter. 

Gone the sweet singing, 
Feasting and fine raiment. 

No footfall ringing 
On the bare pavement. 

In the midnight house 

No taper peeping, 
Only the scratching mouse. 

And a young slave, weeping. 

III. 

Separation is bitterer than death, 

Loneliness more wretched than the grave ! 

Your arms were my funeral wreath 

Clasping, while I bade you farewell : — 

Your tears on my bosom fell, 

No other jewels you gave. 

No perfumes but the sobbing of your breath. 



42 The Thrush and the Jay 



A thousand pieces of gold 

Is the splendid price of your slave. 

Soon shall she be withered and old, 

Shrunken, without longing or regretting: — 

A little while and comes forgetting. 

And knowledge all the beauty she shall have, 

And a heart grown tranquil and cold. 

Rest, my beloved, be at rest, 
Another will be pleasanter than I. 
You shall know again merriment and jest. 
Your house and your garments shall be hand- 
some : — 
I would give my soul as a ransom, 
Shall I not offer willingly 
My lips and my arms and my breast ? 



IV. 



" Here's a slave girl to entice 

Luxury from avarice. 

Black of eye and white of skin, 

With a mole upon her chin, 

Sleek and smooth from hair to shoon. 

Like a willow ! Like a moon ! 



The Fair Persian 43 

See the way she lifts her head ! 
See her lips a scarlet thread ! 
She can dance and play right well, 
She can horoscopes foretell. 
Like the angels she can sing, 
This perfect thing! " 
Stroking his beard the old Vizier 
Drew near. . . . 



V. 

I saw the minaret 
In its slenderness 

Against the morning set 
Companionless. 

Away from all distress 

So quiet there, 
Held in the soft caress 

Of the bright air. 

Shadows of amethyst 
Brushing its white, 

Gentle as eyelids kissed 
At end of night. 



44 The Thrush and the Jay 

Seeing: the minaret 

Companionless, 
How should my soul forget 

Your tenderness? 

VL 

Together, O beloved, together we will go 

Past the crooked vineyards where the round grapes 

grow, 
Where the flashing lizards like green jewels run, 
Where the twisted serpents lie basking in the sun. 
For a robe of honour all the changing hours 
Shall cover us with sunlight and stars and scented 

flowers. 
The sands of the desert. shall be our secret bed, 
The wide sky of midnight shall shield us overhead. 
You shall pluck the zither and I will sing a tune 
To set young feet dancing to the round white 

moon, 
And when the dance is ended, for a coaxing tale 
The sheikhs shall pay us silver to peep beneath 

my veil. 

VII. 

There is a garden 

With a fair pavilion, 
It has a warden 

With a nose vermilion. 



The Fair Persian 45 



He has drunk no wine 

For fifty years, 
But now his Hmp locks twine 

About his ears. 

Enis-el-Jalis 

Is singing to a lute 
In the fair palace 

Of the garden of fruit. 

There is an old man 

Silly as a calf. 
Try as he can 

He is forced to laugh. . . . 

{Here the Kalifeh announces his identity.) 



THE GUILTY PASSION 

She stood at the dressing-table, and questioned 
with her eyes the puzzled eyes in the looking-glass. 
It seemed to her as if the figure there were another 
woman sharing her bewilderment, a woman eager to 
sympathise with her, but empty of help. 

" That it should have happened to me," she 
thought. " That it should have been this! " 

She drew a chair to the table and sat down, with 
her chin propped upon her hands. 

" I must think it out," her brain kept repeating; 
" I must try to understand it from the beginning." 

But at once her thought ceased and she found 
herself sitting still and considering the appearance 
of the woman before her. It was an interesting, 
attractive face, but not beautiful enough to compel 
love. Its flaws tormented her. He had said, so 
once she had heard him, that he admired black 
hair. The hair in the mirror was a dusty sort of 
brown. No help there. She got up and walked 
about the room. 

46 



The Guilty Passion 47 

For a whole fortnight now, waking and sleeping, 
she had known her unhappiness. It was as if a 
blight had settled upon her, hiding all the zest and 
amusement of life. Her daily doings seemed like 
fretting waves on a grey sea of boredom. How 
dull she felt ! Her gaiety before this disaster was 
as incomprehensible to her as the comforts of Eden 
must have seemed after the Fall. It was useless to 
disguise it from herself— she was in love. It had 
happened quite suddenly, and there was no reason 
for it. That was what made her so helpless. She 
had started awake one night in the small hours and 
heard his voice speak twice her Christian name; 
that was all. She had liked him always, of course, 
and is not liking itself perhaps, if there be any 
warmth in it, a promise, a foreshadowing, a point- 
ing of the path at least toward love } She could not 
have loved him if she had not liked him. Should 
she have gone about, as so many women seem to 
do, disliking everyone a little.'' Should she have 
kept away from temptation.'' But she did not 
know it was temptation till she had yielded to it. 
Above all, she did not know she could be so silly. 
She raged at herself. 

He was not half as nice as her husband, but she 
loved everything about him. He was not so hand- 
some, or so kind, or, she could even concede, so 



48 The Thrush and the Jay 

clever. He could give her nothing. He was caus- 
ing her a great deal of suffering. A scandal pre- 
sented neither the charm of need nor of originality. 
Above all, he was not in the least in love with 
her. 

It was to that fact chiefly, indeed, that her un- 
happiness was due. It made the whole affair 
humiliating. It was not even a becoming subject 
for friendly, horrifying confidences. No one could 
pity or excuse her. She could not pity or excuse 
herself. She was ridiculous. Her heart must be 
bruised in secret. She saw the future stretching 
before her, a drab expanse of self-control and self- 
repression, and she was by nature a communicative 
woman. 

She wished, in spite of the role being sadly out of 
date, that she could have played at femme incom- 
prise. She found herself watching her husband 
with the hope that he would be rough or gross at 
times. But he was persistently the best and kindest 
of men. He gave her no justification. He 
thought she must be having headaches. At night 
when she cried a little in her corner over the hate- 
fulness of everything, he would ask gently (was it 
with calculated stupidity.'') : — 

" Have you a cold ?" 

And she would answer, " No." 



The Guilty Passion 49 

Then he would say, " You're not crying, are 
you?" 

And she would answer stubbornly, " No." 

Then would come silence, a long, choking 
silence, in which he seemed to lie in ambush waiting 
for her to blow her nose. 

When she thought him asleep she would pull out 
her handkerchief and snuffle softly into it, but it 
was an unsatisfactory way to weep, quietly like this, 
without big noisy sobs. Her state needed the ex- 
pression of sobs. She wondered, angrily, how he 
could lie there and doze so calmly, turning an in- 
different shoulder, when his whole life lay ruined 
at his side. 

She longed for a place of her own to indulge her 
grief, but she could not make herself a separate bed- 
room without a fuss (the spare room was the nur- 
sery now), and without explanations that would put 
a grimness of reality on her absurd fancy. She 
wanted everything to remain unreal. She wanted 
to love her husband. She had to live with him for 
ever, and their life could be so happy. It was her 
duty to be happy. Her relations expected it of her. 
*' I must be cheerful," she thought, " or people 
will get tired of me." She had been so fortunate, 
and though she had believed that she could not go 
scot-free, she had hoped that small worries, debts, a 

D 



5© The Thrush and the Jay 

risk of measles in the nursery, the fear and anxiety 
when the child was born, would placate destiny. It 
was so unfair. Any other misfortune could have 
been shared and so lightened, but this one was to 
be borne in solitude, in public solitude. 

At first it had been her sin that troubled her. It 
was so base a treachery to the glad ordering of her 
life, and she had prayed to be freed from it. In the 
bath-room she had prayed, as that wa!s the one place 
in the house secure from interruption, and her 
prayer had, in a sense, been answered, for after it at 
any rate she had found peace and joy in her heart, 
and an expectation of seeing the beloved at a tea 
party on the morrow. 

In the end she had prayed that he might love her. 
It seemed incredible that she should be so miser- 
able, and he be indifferent. Could she not believe 
that he was not indifferent } When she met him, 
could she not pretend he had come to meet her.? 
If he picked up her table-napkin at a dinner party, 
might she not translate it to affectionate attentive- 
ness } So many women flattered themselves that 
way. If he loved her, she thought it would draw 
the poison from her own wound. It did not com- 
fort her to know how little she must really care if 
she could thus contentedly anticipate his suffering. 
She prayed that she might see him often. . . . 



The Guilty Passion 51 

She crossed to the window, and looked down into 
the quiet street. The hot sunlight exposed its 
barrenness. She did not know when she should be 
seeing him again. It was nearly five days 

Downstairs in her household, afternoon stillness 
reigned. The ornaments on the drawing-room 
mantelpiece had been dusted, the new shade covered 
for the lamp. She was supposed to be lying on her 
bed, resting from these exertions. Her nurse, 
flushed and pushing the perambulator, turned the 
street corner. She was bringing Miss Baby in to her 
tea. The mother let the curtain fall stealthily, and 
stepped back into the room. She did not want to 
seem glad just then. Lately, when the thought of 
her child came, another thought came too : " If it 
were not for you, everything would be so simple." 
She heard the bustle in the hall subside, and her 
daughter being carried past her door, with loud 
" hushings," and a whispered '' Don't wake 
mammy." Then she returned to the window. She 
leaned her forehead against the sash and placed her 
hands one on each side of her waist. Standing so, 
she felt like those old women who survey life 
perpetually from darkened rooms through the 
slanted modesty of their lace curtains. The blank- 
ness of such lives seemed smothering her; she felt 
in prison. Far up the street, on the opposite side, 

D 2 



52 The Thrush and the Jay 

she saw the postman coming — the postman, who 
brings to the suburbs invitations and bazaar notices 
at four o'clock. In her present mood, the zig-zag 
progress of his approach had the excitement of a 
mihtary band. Next door he came, then over the 
road. " He will go by," she thought. " He will 
go by." For an intense moment she prayed that 
he might not pass her. Even a bill would be better 
than nothing. He had passed the gate. She hated 
him. No, he was coming in. Rat-tat ! 

As a precaution against curiosity, she kicked ofF 
her shoes, and lay down on the bed. The maid 
brought up her letter. The crisp envelope was 
familiar to her fingers, familiar, and how dear ! 

" Draw the curtains, please," she said to the 
maid, in a creaking, indifferent voice. It was hard 
to hide her eagerness. 

The curtain-rings rang upon the poles, and 
yellow light flooded the room. Not till the door 
had shut did she behold her treasure. It was 
addressed in small, vertical, spasmodic handwriting 
— the usual handwriting of young men. She held 
it against her throat. It was from him. 

He invited her to dine with him, and go to a 
theatre that night. Clang ! clang ! went the joyous 
cymbals in her brain. The shortness of the notice 
must mean that someone else had failed him, but 



The Guilty Passion 53 

she did not trouble about that. She should see him. 
Her time of uncertainty was, for the present, over. 
For a moment her tedious orbit would brush the 
butterfly dance of his. Her cheeks became pink. 
Her eyes sparkled. She ran to romp with the baby. 
Laughter enveloped her. Her husband, caught in 
the whirlwind of her gaiety, circled, in the intervals 
of dressing, her body with his arms. She kissed his 
neck with warmth and enthusiasm. She loved all 
the world. She loved even her wretched thoughts 
for providing so extravagant a contrast to her hap- 
piness. They had helped, at any rate, to gtt rid of 
the afternoon. 

Here was another chance of re-capturing her 
liberty. If she could make him love her, then 
surely she would be free. She sought out her 
prettiest gown. She fastened a flower in her hair. 
She felt lovely and adorable. She was following a 
singing star. The woman in the mirror, mimicking 
her brightness, seemed to dismiss her to prosperity, 
as if she were again a bride, with smiles of approval 
and encouragement. 



A HOLY MAN IN THE DESERT 

I. 

My thoughts are pallid moths that flit and flit 
About my soul's small upward-thrilling flame; 
Their hovering wings do near extinguish it, 
And in the heavy dark I sink in shame. 
I want you not, uncalled to me you came. 
Moth thoughts, soft thoughts, do not destroy my 

soul, 
It is my lamp, my life, my happy whole. 
It burned so calmly to the sacred name. 

Kut now you were a host of golden bees 
In that light gilded and emblazoned. 
Returning laden from the airy seas 
With piled-up sweet and treasure harvested; 
Your homing wings were decked and perfumed 
With secret buds and raptured flowers' embrace, 
With swaying boughs that stroke the heavens' face, 
And all the honey that the winds have shed. 



A Holy Man in the Desert 55 

The pale wings fall like petals on my breast, 
I cannot brush them hence, I cannot strive. 
They make a murmuring as they lie at rest 
Sweeter than bee song in the summer hive. 
They are more strong than I, more, more alive, 
My light is quenched, yielding and dumb I hear 
Stirring the dark, invincibly draw near 
Thoughts that from out my heart I cannot drive. 



II. 



Dawn ! And a clean air and a wind that blows 

Cool as spring water in a hidden well 

Through my dulled veins until the quick blood 

glows. 
Dawn! And the new sun whitening my cell. 
I, of my soul the vanquished sentinel. 
With sudden gladness as new washed of sin. 
Fling wide the door and all athirst drink in 
The quiet world, the dew-drenched morning smell. 

Bright and hard-fleshed am I as polished stone. 
Clear as a cup of crystal without stain, 
I stand upright and joy to stand alone, 
And feel myself unmastered once again. 



56 The Thrush and the Jay 

" Unmastered ! " God forgive me! 'tis in vain 
I seek to bow my head, for the old pride 
Is obdurate and will not be denied 
When under foot I think to have it slain. 



Pardon me, O my God, for Thy good light 

It is that puts repentance from my soul, 

I cannot weep because the evil night 

Is stripped from me and I am safe and whole; 

I am my own thanksgiving, need not dole 

To Thee tears and self-'braidings. Here I stand 

Happy before the wonders of Thy hand, 

The radiant morning and the long hill's roll. 



THE SIXTH ACT. 

The room was a panelled one, and the panelling 
had been painted white. Its milky surface gave 
back an uncertain glimmering to the ghostly, sun- 
less daylight. It was a late afternoon at the slow 
end of winter. 

In the deep-set window a woman was sitting. She 
was leaning against the glass, so that through her 
sleeve she could feel its chill upon the soft flesh of 
her arm, and through her thick hair it was cold 
upon her forehead. Her round, pretty head looked 
black against the pane. At her sides her hands lay, 
palm upwards, trailing, with fingers lightly curled, 
and her whole posture suggested an infinity of 
lassitude and sadness. 

So she had been sitting all day, looking down 
into the street, or across the square to where the 
gaunt plane trees rattled their inky balls, until with 
her strained eyes she could see the dusk descend- 
ing. Veil after blackish veil seemed to be 
lowered across the house-tops, to be dipped, to be 



58 The Thrush and the Jay 

withdrawn, to be lowered again a little further. 
Her heart felt as if it would burst with the dull 
fatigue of idlene&s. 

Everything changed, and everything was the 
same. Often she had sat like that in her old home 
before she was married, felt so waking, sleeping, 
cried out to herself in soft, despairing voice, *' How 
many more times am I going to see that pattern of 
twigs out of my window, that church spire against 
the sky.'"' and then she had thought, " O God, if I 
should never see anything else all my life!" and 
her heart had contracted until she felt sick with 
anguish. Just such an anguish was stifling her 
now. 

How much happier everyone else seemed than 
herself. She had only to catch a glimpse of them 
through the window to be sure of that. Children 
rolling hoops, nurses gossiping as they jogged the 
handles of perambulators, a servant girl smart in 
cap and apron with letters for the post, messenger 
boys, greengrocers, bakers, milkmen, even the lady 
from the corner house with the dyed hair and the 
lap-dog — all, all were happier than she. Most 
achingly she noticed the young women so like her- 
self, only that they were busy, hastening home 
with flowers in their arms or cardboard boxes with 
cakes in them. And those fire-lit interiors, those 



The Sixth Act 59 



warm rooms, to screen which she could see the cur- 
tains even now being drawn, how she longed to be 
walking into one of them, part herself of the order- 
liness, the cheerful glow ! What did it feel like to 
tread confidently a familiar hall, fling wide a door 
and cry, " Well, how has everything been?" 

Or — the lonelier way, that had been her way, 
and was also very good and perhaps more dis- 
tinguished — to ring a bell, and say : 

*' Bring me some tea-cakes, please. Be quick! " 
She missed the entry of the maid with tea. In 
Cambridge Terrace her dullest days had held some 
such small mercy. How pleasant her housemaid's 
smile had been, sympathetic for the loneliness of a 
young wife, as she set out the table and made up 
the fire and drew the curtains (just as those house- 
maids were doing over the way), and left the tea- 
urn singing. Her tea urn ! (A hard gulp of tears 
arose in her throat.) She remembered so well the 
first time she had seen it. It was in a Chelsea shop, 
sedate and comely against a background of old 
shawls, lace, china, and mahogany. She had 
coveted at once its silvery roundness, the little ring- 
holding lions' mouths at its sides, the green-stained 
bone at the tap. She had known at once that she 
should enjoy making her tea with the help of it, and 
her husband had bought it for her. Ah ! there was 



6o The Thrush and the Jay 

a wonderful joyousness about everything in those 
days. It was silly to cry for a tea-urn, but all the 
same it was the little things, the things that ought 
not to count, that tormented you when you hadn't 
them. One could not go on pretending all one's 
life that a mere roof over one's head was a thing 
to be thankful for. She jerked her foot pettishly. 

The fire had sunk down in the grate, but she 
had no will to rise and put coal on it. Let it go 
out. It would only be another pebble on her 
mountain of discomfort. It did not matter. Here 
nothing mattered. One could sit for hours in the 
same place without any fear of people " talking," 
of giving an impression that something was 
" wrong." 

Her thoughts wandered to the street again. 
Would none of them look up, those passing people, 
and see the dark-eyed woman who sat so still there 
in the window.'' Her isolation felt colder than 
the glass. If they would but look they might guess 
at her story; but, no, they hurried by, self-absorbed, 
unheeding. They had no time as she had to brood 
and speculate. Ah, why should they ? It was all 
very old and stale. Even her friends had probably 
forgotten her. Did they ever mention her name .'' 
A year ago it had made piquant sauce for many a 
stodgy conversation ; but nobody could go on being 



The Sixth Act 6i 



shocked for ever. Like love (she thought bitterly, 
but enjoying the contemptuous shape the thought 
gave to her mouth) one could not keep it up. If 
they were not shocked, she knew that they were 
not interested; then why should they speak of her.'' 
She was lost, out of sight, gone headlong as a 
stone into a well. A hope strained within her that 
sometimes they might at least abuse her. Did 
the dead feel so.'' 

She shivered lightly, and then a pink flush 
sprang into her cheeks. Oh, those old times ! The 
intrigue, the excitement, the letters, the stealthy 
walks in the park! Those mornings when every- 
thing she saw seemed full of a hidden meaning, a 
divine elation. A secret ! Most satisfying treasvire 
in the world. It was her prize of prizes. How 
she had gone about hugging herself! She could 
picture herself now, rising up from tea-parties, 
from luncheons, the "Must you really go.''" of 
her hostess and her own sweetly resolute " Yes, 
really," with a roll of the eyes that implied miracles. 
And then the furtive journeying, the side streets, 
the bland word of explanation for chance en- 
counters, the steep staircase, the opening door, the 
strong arms to draw her inside it, her murmured 
" Just for a minute, a little minute," and at last 
the warm darkness, the dear intimacy of his room, 



62 The Thrush and the Jay 

his little white panelled room — where she was 
now! 

She moved one hand in deprecating gesture. 
Could such a thing be possible ? The flush faded 
from her face. She had asked for stolen kisses 
and they gave her a divorce suit. Her husband 
had been so ready to get rid of her. She 
had shown him only her bored, discontented side 
after the first happy days, so how could he love her } 
He had given her everything she had asked for, 
including her freedom. Ah, but she had not 
wanted that. He should have refused her. That 
would have kept some colour, some interest in 
life. Harsh finger-marks upon one's arm, staccato 
curses, breath that hissed in the nose, these at any 
rate would have been interesting. Even if he 
longed for her a little still, what a triumphant 
haven her panelled room would be. But to be 
cast off, to be let pack and go, bag and baggage 
(or, at least, a little of the baggage), out of his 
house and his life and his thoughts! To have 
gone without leaving even a regret behind — it was 
humiliating. Worse, it was flat. 

And now if she were not careful it would all 
happen over again. Not yet, not for a long time 
perhaps, for her lover was still wholly her lover, 
but some day, some sudden day might not he, too. 



The Sixth Act 63 



tire of her unrest, her peevishness? Already, she 
knew, her caprices bothered him. He wanted to 
take her to his friends, to theatres, picture galleries, 
concerts. To make plain and permanent their 
relation. But she shrank from reminders of her 
former world. She did not, in very truth, much 
care to be seen about with him. She could not 
endure the defeat of going to the pit, where 
formerly her place had been the stalls, of a gown 
less fashionable, of a tell-tale, unradiant face. 

Nerves, he called it, nerves, nerves, nerves. He 
would lose patience — some day. Horrors were 
outside in the darkness and confronted her. She 
had always been an inexpert fool. Where were 
her daring, her high spirits, her grace, her sharp 
tongue } She must keep them and him. 

Instinctively she made a movement to get up 
and mend the fire; but she checked herself and 
sank back into inaction. She must not be servile. 
After all, perhaps, it would not be he who would 
tire first. 

She gave a stiff little yawn. To have given up 
everything for love, that was magnificent, but to 
have to keep on doing it, it was always against 
this frigid monotony that she had struggled. She 
would not let her thoughts be monotonous, any- 
how. It was a principle. A little snap and sparkle 



64 The Thrush and the Jay 

came into her eyes. She turned her back to the 
window and leaned her head more comfortably. 
She was not heroic, perhaps, not so like Iseult and 
Guinevere as she had fancied; but what could she 
do ? If she had been born a lighl: woman she would 
have to endure it. It was no use quarrelling with 
fate. She gave her shoulder-blades the smallest 
possible shrug. Already she felt happier. The 
future had several possibilities left. She reviewed 
them for a moment. A smile came upon her lips 
and stayed there. Perhaps, after all, the leaves 
would be green again, the air golden. 

Far down in the house she heard the thud of 
a closing door. Sitting quite still she listened to 
the eager step mounting the stairs. 



HELAS! 

Ah ! little tree, that shone in May 
With glistening leaves and blossoms gay. 
How show you now the bitter air 
Of time has stripped your branches bare ? 

You that I loved and praised as one 
That seemed a nursling of the sun — 
What the bleak soil, what harsh wind blew, 
Thus to deform and wither you ? 

Apparelled in the robe of Spring, 
You bloomed so fresh and fine a thing; 
Was that most joyous canopy 
But a disguise, my little tree ? 

I loved the blossoms and the green, 
The coloured, carved, intricate screen : 
Enchanted by the sight of them. 
How should I mark the crooked stem? 

65 TP 



HUNTING SONG 

The hunt is up, the hunt is up, 

It sounds from hill to hill. 

It pierces to the secret place 

Where we are lying still, 

And one of us the quarry is, 

And one of us must go 

When through the arches of the wood 

We hear the dread horn blow. 

A huntsman bold is Master Death, 

And reckless does he ride, 

And terror's hounds with bleeding fangs 

Go baying at his side. 

And will it be a milk-white doe 

Or little dappled fawn. 

Or will it be an antlered stag 

Must face the icy dawn .'' 

Or will it be a golden fox 
Must leap from out his lair. 
Or where the trailing shadows pass 
A merry romping hare ^ 

66 



Hunting Song 67 



The hunt is up, the horn is loud 
By plain and covert side, 
And one must run alone, alone, 
When Death abroad does ride. 

But idle 'tis to crouch in fear. 

Since Death will find you out. 

Then up and hold your head erect 

And pace the wood about. 

And swim the stream and leap the wall 

And race the starry mead, 

Nor feel the bright teeth in your flank 

Till they be there indeed. 

For in the secret hearts of men 

Are peace and joy at one. 

There is a pleasant land where stalks 

No darkness in the sun. 

And through the arches of the wood 

Do break like silver foam 

Young laughter and the noise of flutes 

And voices singing home. 



E 2 



THE INTRUDER 

He was tall and very thin and he stooped a little. 
About his mouth a nervous smile flickered con- 
tinually. It gave him an appearance of restlessness, 
and his hands, too, were restless. That was since 
his smoking had been stopped. It was only for a 
tinie, of course, and of course it was worth while 
to be careful; but it left him ill at ease. To be 
without a cigarette added to the strangeness of 
walking by the edge of a lake in bright sunshine, 
while at home they were putting up umbrellas and 
shivering in the north-east wind. He was lucky 
to be out of it, wasn't he.'' He wished, though, 
that he could have had another chap with him, not 
a miserable specimen like himself, but someone 
big and strong and to be relied on, someone who 
did not have to stop and rest every fifty yards, 
someone who didn't scan his face in the glass every 
morning as if he expected to see — what was it he 
expected to see there.? 

The young man turned his thoughts abruptly 

63 



The Intruder 69 



from the question. He leaned his elbows on 
the balustrade and watched the swans moving 
on the water. How much at ease they were, and 
how untroubled ! His fingers journeyed mechanic- 
ally to his breast pocket, and then, as he remem- 
bered that there were no cigarettes in it, withdrew 
and fell to his side. He resumed his walk under 
the chestnut trees. 

After all, the risk was very slight. He did not 
feel the smallest stir of anxiety about himself. 
There was no reason why he should not live for 
fifty years, the doctors had told him that, if he 
took proper care of himself. Well, he was taking 
care. Why should he be anxious .'' One gave — 
that was it ? — a year or two of one's life to getting 
well, after that one might scale the Himalayas. 
What idiotic phrases the doctors had used! He 
had not the least desire to scale the Himalayas. 
But he should like to be out in a boat again in 
a choppy sea, where the salt stung your eyes and 
the wind took your breath away, and not crawling 
everlastingly between a wall of hills and a slopping 
puddle of lake-water. 

He sat down on a seat and watched the sun 
beginning to set. The lake looked like silk. He 
thought again of his imaginary companion. It 
would be pleasant to hear him say, " You know, 



70 The Thrush and the Jay 

old man, you're simply walking me off my feet. 
Let's sit down for a bit." Was he too hopeful? 
Optimism was part of the disease he had always 
heard. He supposed he ought to dread it like 
haemorrhage. The sun disappeared and the hills 
became lead-coloured. It was time to go to his 
hotel and eat his dinner. " Big meals, plenty of 
good fresh air " — as he ate his thoughts grew lively 
again. After all, if he were really a " malade," he 
would never have been admitted to this select 
pension. They had a printed postscript on the tariff 
to that effect. He exaggerated, he frightened 
himself, he ought to keep remembering that the 
risk was very small. He felt elated. He longed 
for gaiety, for the hum of crowds. He decided 
that he would go to the Kursaal. 

"Will the weather keep fine, do you think .f* " 
he asked the concierge. 

" Impossible to say. Monsieur," was the 
answer. But the young man would not let his 
mood be shattered. He waved his hat merrily. 
How pretty the town was with its lights. They 
sent tinsel streams of gold and silver down into 
the smooth depths of the lake, and the surrounding 
hills had crowns of light upon them, and the car- 
riages of the funicular, moving through the dark- 
ness, were like little golden mice. The air was 



The Intruder 71 



loaded with the scents of lilac and wistaria. He 
passed through the swing doors into the Kursaal. 
A hubbub of sounds rushed to meet him, a medley 
of fiddles, of voices, of feet ringing on the paved 
floor, of clapping hands from the music hall. At 
once, in the throng, his self-confidence began to 
fade from him. He stood at the top of the steps 
uncertain which way to turn. He moved hesi- 
tatingly to the " Jeu de Bal." Round the door- 
way stood a crowd of eager spectators, townsmen 
forbidden by a fatherly council to take part in the 
sport, gazing in silent fascination while their 
visitors were corrupted inside. The young man 
elbowed a way through them. 

" Le Dix," snarled the man with the ball. The 
croupier manipulated his silver rake. No one was 
smiling. An old woman with many bracelets added 
a franc to her increasing store. It was rather a 
grim game. 

The young man wriggled himself into the front 
row of those standing at the table. Every seat was 
occupied. He pulled out a franc and tossed it on 
to the space marked 5. The ball ran round and 
round. The silver coins had an exposed and naked 
air upon the dark green cloth. " Rien de plus," 
cried the nasal voice. The ball ran slower and 
slower. The people round the table watched it 



72 The Thrush and the Jay 

as cats watch birds. It began to waver, it swung 
across, it rolled back, it rocked from pocket to 
pocket. The silence was keen. 

" Le Six," came the harsh cry. 

The silver rake clawed the young man's franc 
into the croupier's heap. The young man threw 
down another. The ball ran round and round. 
The silence settled. He was not exactly gay. Still, 
he was out for a merry evening. Had he not 
waved his hat to the concierge? He lost seven 
francs. On the whole, he was glad that he did 
not win. Good luck there would have been 
frightening. He preferred to have his fortune in 
another way. He thought he would try for amuse- 
ment in the music hall. 

It was quite full when he went in, so he stood 
for awhile looking at the lighted stage. A man 
with a tall hat on his head was doing a burlesque 
dance. As his feet battered on the boards his face 
grimaced comically. 

" La Gioconda," he cried, folding his arms and 
grinning, " toujours la sourire"; or " Le Roi 
d'Espagne " — he turned sideways, jutting out his 
lower lip in an ugly fashion. The audience 
applauded him. The orchestra stopped playing for 
a moment. " Rahdy addle addle," went the feet 
on the boards. 



The Intruder 73 



" Pom, pom, pom," came in the orchestra again. 

That was not very amusing either. Besides, the 
hall was very hot. The young man left it and 
went into the restaurant. There were still the 
pleasures of the Cinema and Winter Gardens un- 
tasted. Meanwhile, he ordered himself a " bock." 
While he waited for it he amused himself by 
watching the people. 

Beside him in the corner four Frenchmen were 
playing cards. Sometimes they grew angry, some- 
times they chaffed one another. Near the door 
some young Americans were taking drinks. 

" I count that my stay here," one of them was 
saying, " will be worth a hundred dahllars a day 
to me. When a man has lived four years in a 
place people rackon he knows something about it. 
In Los Angeles " 

On the right a very pretty little girl was talking 
much too fast to two most unpretty little men. 

Further along the wall a couple of decent mad- 
chens were eating ices, protected by an ancient 
cavalier. 

At the table opposite the young man's a woman 
in a black satin gown was sitting. She was without 
a hat, and her fair hair was rippled fashionably all 
over her head. Her hands, with their highly- 
polished nails, were clasped beneath her chin, and 



74 The Thrush and the Jay 

she leant forward talking with fierce animation to 
a grey-haired man who seemed very still beside 
her. Her youthful face glistened with the rapidity 
of her speech. She laughed and chattered so 
much that she made herself cough. She had to 
lean back in her chair for a moment to recover 
herself. 

Then, while the young man watched her, she did 
an extraordinary thing. She turned away from 
her companion, and with a furtive movement 
thrust her hand into the folds of the cloak that 
was thrown across the back of the chair. Still 
quietly and furtively she drew out a small black 
flask, which the young man supposed to be a bottle 
of smelling salts, and held it close to her face. 
He saw how deadly pale she was. Was she going 
to faint, he wondered .'' Then he saw a thing that 
made the restaurant, with its tables and crowd and 
noise, seem to rise up round him in a black vortex. 
From the young woman's mouth into the flask had 
crawled a something that was thick and white — 
a thing like a white snake. 

The young man gripped the sides of his table. 
The room grew steady again. The young woman 
had restored the black flask to her pocket, and 
was talking, laughing, ridiculing, with her former 
furious gaiety. The young man watched her 



The Intruder 75 



with wretched eyes. His moist hand clasped the 
glass before him. He thought : 

" I cannot drink this. I must go home." 
Then he thought : " After all, it may happen to 
anyone at any minute. It is only a matter of years 
or days or hours, and what is the difference of those 
in the flood of time.? There were a few things 
that I should have liked to do, but what do they 
matter .-^ Children pretend to be heroes, and isn't 
that the happiest of all games.'' Doing things .f* 
Better to lie in bed with one's eyes shut — one will 
be as happy as the greatest man that ever lived. 
And, after all, happiness or unhappiness are all 
one. Whatever happens is over before one has 
time to taste it. It's no use being afraid. We all 
have to pass by the same way. W^hy," his eyes 
began to shine at his own valour, " the only way 
to enjoy life is to be careless of it. To hold it as 
lightly as a feather on one's palm." 

He took a Bifr drink of the beer. The woman 
in the black satin gown got up from her chair and 
with her companion disappeared in the throng of 
the corridor. The young man lost sight of them. 
Flushed and excited he sat sipping, gazing before 
him proudly. The risk was such a small one. No 
decent man was going to snivel about it. One had 
only to brace one's shoulders and it was gone. He 



76 The Thrush and the Jay 

felt as he had felt an hour ago when he had waved 

CD 

his hat to the conciers^e. 

All round him was the noise of voices, of fiddles, 
of promenading feet scraping the pavement, of 
corks being drawn, of glasses jingling upon plates, 
they merged about him into a great full-throated 
roll of sound, and then — outside in the corridor 
— someone had begun to cough. The fair-haired 
woman became individualised in the crowd, strug- 
gling to free herself, to get back to her seat. The 
young man did not wait for her return. He did 
not want to finish his beer. It was all very fine 
to talk about the common lot and to set your jaw 
squarely, but that chokiness, that horror, that 
loathsome little black flask 

He got upon his feet and grasped hurriedly for 
his hat. The doors of the Kursaal swung to in 
mercy behind him. The night air felt cold. 
Buttoning his jacket he walked, very upright, to 
the Hotel. 



A BATHE ONE SUNDAY 

The cornfields shone like glass, 

Each ear a rainbow was, 

The brambles were more full of bees 

Than of purple blackberries, 

On every emerald leaf there stood 

A ladybird like a drop of blood, 

And little flowers like mirrored sky 

Rose up and flew as we came by. 

No sound of wheel, no song of bird^ 
No grasshopper his fiddle stirred; 
Almost the chewing of the cows 
Sounded o'er seven fields — a house 
With boarded windows, silent, shut,, 
Like a dead mole in a rut ! 

The air was full of thistledown, 
Phantoms by the light wind blown,, 

. [77 



78 The Thrush and the Jay 

In the grass the seeking stream 
Made a brown translucent gleam : 
Easily, it seemed, as they, 
We, too, went upon our way. 



What they sought, that sought we 
Under many an arching tree. 
Into shadows deep and cool 
As a tawny fishing pool, 
Over meadows on whose breast 
Yellow sunshine lay at rest. 
What they sought, that sought we- 
Waiting splendour of the sea. 

There at last before our feet 
Loveliness is made complete, 
Earth and sea a crystal cup 
Rounded, perfect, brimming up! 
Down the cliff, a golden stair. 
To where the blessed waters are. 
Lipping, kissing the warm stones. 
Lapping benedictions. 
Sweet as music, clear as light. 
Turquoise, silken, clinging, bright. 
Now must we our bodies dress 
In this garment's loveliness. 



A Bathe One Sunday 79 

Barnes's bull is safe in shed 

Far away and tethered, 

Barnes and neighbours far away 

On their knees do pray : 

Standing, loud they sing, and yet 

Whom they worship makes them sweat. 

Whom we worship lets no eye 
Come our bathing to espy, 
Whom we worship lets the sea 
In gentleness our playmate be, 
Whom we worship, shuts us in 
His blue garden without sin — 
Praise we him who makes us part 
Of the summer's heart. 



OUT OF THE WIND 

On the pier-head we were watching four little 
boats, tail-end of some irrelevant regatta, tacking 
round about a couple of buoys that showed 
crimson flags in the seaway. The air was sunny, 
the waves blue and slapping briskly, the wind 
came due east from a clear sky. Some of us were 
talking " strikes," some in tweed coats were talk- 
ing " fishing," some, no doubt, were flirting enjoy- 
ably with the brown-cheeked maidens of the 
watering-place; but I, because an east wind makes 
me cower and seems to thrust cold fingers into 
the very marrow of my bones, slipped quietly 
shorewards to where, halfway down the pier, a 
glass screen was raised with seats on either side 
of it, a sturdy barrier between hostile weather 
and the comforts of the sunset. There I chose 
my seat and opened my paper and stretched my 
toes out to warm at the westering blaze. Then 
the first voice reached me. It was American and 
went with a level swing — " Eelectricity," it said, 

" is not a thing to play about with. My maid 

80 



Out of the Wind 8i 

used to stand one side of me and the rays got 
on to her by mistake, and, would you believe it, 
that girl was par^-lysed for two hours? I had to 
fasten my dress myself. She got the full current. 
You can stand these things when you are ill, 
but you can't stand them when you are well. 
I had nine doctors and three nurses for an entire 
year " 



People passing made a resounding clatter on the 
wooden boards of the pier, that curious stammering 
tramp of feet stepping out of time together. As 
the noise became distant the voice penetrated to 
me again — swift, nasal, taking all hedges without 
altering its stride. 

"They wanted to break my arm," it said; 
" that's your English method. I know, for I had 
all the big men seeing me, I was a very special 
case; the Paris doctor disagreed with them. * Well, 
look here,' I said, ' something has to be done about 
this. I can't go about all my life with one arm 
fat and the other arm thin.' It looked so odd 
in evening dress. Then the Swiss spec-i-alist said 
he would take me over and cure me " 

I lost it. 

" Eelectricity," it resumed, " is not a thing you 
can play about with. I had three nurses for over 
a year, two in the daytime and one at night. I 

F 



82 The Thrush and the Jay 

know what it is to be ill. When I take off my 
clothes I have a pattern all over me like a damask 
table-cloth. A sort of Iris pattern " 

It had gone again. 

Clatter, clatter on the wooden floor and another 
voice, shrill and insistent of attention. 

" I said as soon as I saw him, ' That dog isn't 
as fit as he should be, his eyes are dull and his 
nose is hot and dry ' " 

Strophe and antistrophe. The American lady 
took up the tale. 

" She was cleaning gloves with a big basin of 
petrol and I said, ' Get my bath ready,' and she 
turned round " 

"Oh, sulphur! But this morning when I felt 
his nose " 

" The whole thing flared up! And, would you 
believe it, that girl walked straight out of the 
room and shut the door ! Oh, she lost her nerve, 
that was it, she lost her nerve " 

" He wagged his tail and I said, ' Feeling better, 
old fellow '" 

" I told them straight out : ' I can't go about 
like this all my life with one arm fat and the other 
arm thin ' " 

" And his nose was so nice and cold and quite 
moist." 



Out of the Wind 83 

The second voice was s:ettinor the best of it. 
I had hoped to hear more about the Iris pattern. 
I did not care for the dog so much (even when 
he rejected his biscuit), and when I knew I was 
going to hear about the time he was sick 
in her bedroom I got up and moved to a seat 
lower down. 

There were only two people near me, a middle- 
aged clergyman and an old lady in black. We were 
still more sheltered from the wind, and I settled 
myself to read again when I heard yet another 
voice. Such a voice! A maddening, infamous, 
diabolical voice. A flat voice, a voice with no 
ups and downs or quickenings or slurrings in it, 
a persistent tediously emphasising voice, a voice 
to make you scream and wring your hands and 
break things. It was inexorable, unescapable, 
without a period — " Of course when one has all 
the heavy luggage ," it was saying. 

I looked round at her. She must have been 
seventy years old, and her black bonnet had tilted 
a little to one side. Her eyes were black, too, 
and her brows heavy, her nose was hooked, and 
her mouth increased beyond the intention of 
Nature by the way she drew the ends of it into 
the corners of her jaws, and kept them there. In 
her hand, covered with black kid gloves, she had 

F 2 



84 The Thrush and the Jay 

a black sunshade; it was closed, but she held it 
upright between her and the sunset, as if it were 
a loaded gun or the correcting rod of a dominie. 
Her calm was terrible. 

" Of course, when one has had all the heavy 
luggage one cannot help feeling a little tired. But 
one does not expect to feel tired for a whole week 
even when one has had all the heavy luggage." 

Every word had its weight. She did not hurry 
herself. She was stating, simply stating. 

I looked at her companion. He was a florid man 
with a big face and rather thin hair, brushed back 
from a high forehead. His nose was shapely and 
crowned with eye-glasses, his calves were shapely 
too, and one day would possibly display them- 
selves to great advantage in gaiters. His boots 
were thick and suggested a country parsonage, his 
jacket of alpaca was much crumpled at the back, 
his straw hat he held upon his knee, on his finger 
was a gold seal ring. A comely man, a comfort- 
able man, why did he endure this persecution ^ 

" Two pounds seven," the voice was saying for 
the third time; "if it had been two guineas I 
should have borne it patiently, but two pounds 
seven " 

Evidently some weekly bill at a boarding-house 
was in dispute. 



Out of the Wind 85 

" Well, it would have been two guineas," said 
the clergyman with a faint show of spirit, " if you 
hadn't come and turned me out." 

"I turn you out? I did not turn you out. I 
simply said I preferred to have my usual room. 
At St. Clare's or St. Hilda's they would have taken 
you for thirty-five shillings, or at St. Ermyn- 
trude's " (the saints, I perceived, have still some 
ascetic influences left). I missed his exclamation. 

" St. Ermyntrude's is not at all a low place. 
Lots of University men go there. They would 
have taken you for two guineas. I should not have 
minded two guineas, but two pounds seven " 

Why did not he strangle her and throw the body 
into the sea.^ I should not have told. I flashed 
a sympathetic eye towards him. What bondage 
was this ? What consideration on earth could keep 
him in such durance.'' Could they be married.^ 
Surely, if she was only a parent he must long ago 
have fled and slammed the door. But clearly she 
was his mother. 

He had exclaimed a trifle testily. 

She said : " It is done, yes, I know it is done, 
you need not tell me that. I know it is done, to 
my cost I know it is done, and not the first time 
either. Expenses and expenses, throwing money 
into a ditch ever .since your University days " 



86 The Thrush and the Jay 

" I went to Oxford to please you." 

" I am not talking about that. I am not com- 
plaining. I am saying that throwing money into 

a ditch " She said it a great number of times. 

He leant back with folded arms and yawned 
elaborately. There was a silence. 

Presently the voice addressed his profile. 

" This is a very pleasant place." 

It waited. " Yes," came the response after a 
minute. 

" You meet a number of quite nice people here." 

" Yes." 

" You have met four or five University men 
here that you knew, haven't you."^ " 

After the sour the sweet. She waited for him. 

" Yes." 

"This is a very pleasant place, isn't it-f*" 

*' Yes," a little quicker that time. 

It was bullying. That was it. Bullying! It 
was making a small boy blubber and confess him- 
self a fool. How could he suffer it.^* What tie 
other than a Heavenly forbearance — clearly there 
was none of earthly love — could so restrain 
him.f* 

A bath chair crept past us. In it was what 
appeared to be a skeleton covered with old parch- 
ment. Rugs enveloped it. It wore a fur cap on 



Out of the Wind 87 

its head. On its hands, still as wooden things, 
gloves had been drawn. It was a horrid sight. 

"There goes old Mr. Dodd," said the voice; 
" a wonderful old man. Must be ninety-six at 
least. His daughter was at school with me. The 
Dodds are very nice people. One used to meet 
a great many University men at their house." 

(O careless boys in blazers, is this your ultimate 
end.?) 

And, as if some stealthy sense of the tragedy 
of life had touched her for a moment, a desire to 
gather roses while she might, she said to her son, 
almost with cordiality, as if he were a stranger — 

" Would you like to go up to London for a few 

days and see " (she named the worst stage play 

to be found in that city). 

Here was his opportunity. Now for a crowded 
hour of glorious life. The bath chair was still 
menacingly in my eyes. " ' Vita Brevis,' Univer- 
sity man." I hung upon his words, I held my 
breath. 

This is what he said : 

'* I think we have everything here. That would 
be throwing money away, if you like." 

He settled himself more firmly upon his 
haunches. He had chosen. 

The sun went behind a cloud. 



88 The Thrush and the Jay 

Feeling " chilly," Mamma thought it was time 
they *'were getting back." She would take his 
arm up the hill. One could not help feeling a 
little tired when one had had all the heavy luggage. 

I watched them go. I hoped I should never 
see them again. I got up and walked in the wind, 
its vigour filled me with a glow, an exhilaration. 
Behind its tumult a round moon was rising, rose- 
coloured as a lamp-shade, in a sky of dimmest 
lavender. Somewhere a clock struck seven. Peace 
settled upon the waters like a cloud. But in my 
mind I could hear only that voice settling its blight 
upon the boarding-house dinner- table : " Surely 
it is not necessary for the soup to be quite cold.'' " 



THE WORLD IS A BRIDGE 

The world is a bridge^ pass over it^ but do not 
build upon it. 

"Not to build a house on a Bridge? " said she, 

"What place could be pleasanter to my mind? 

'Twixt water and air, apart, aloof, 

With four white towers and a silver roof, 

A house that would sway at the push of the wind — 

A house on a bridge my house shall be. 

" Out of a window I shall lean 

On a glorious banner wide outspread, 

'Broidered by prodigal hands of old 

With silk and jewels and threads of gold, 

Green and blue and purple and red, 

Fit for a queen and I a queen. 



90 The Thrush and the Jay 

" There I shall sit in the rain or shine. 

And watch the river or grey or blue. 

While the maids as they sew will chatter and sing 

Of a demoiselle and the son of a king, 

But the fairest will only sing of you. 

Friend, sweet friend, and lover of mine. 

" And when the wind is warm from the south. 

And river and sky are blue together, 

A marvellous barque will sail our way 

With a crew of the gallant, the bold, the gay, 

And I'll know you by the peacock's feather, 

And you'll know me by the rose in my mouth." 

Ah, bridge from the unborn into the grave! 
Ah, headlong flight of the shining hours! 
Ah, Time, ah, river that flows and flows 
Over the peacock and over the rose. 
The silver roof and the snow-white towers. 
What drowned hopes you have! 



ADVERSARIES 

He was airing his socks in the dressing-room. 
The gas fire gilded his bare shins as he stood, a 
sock depending hmply from either hand, his flannel 
shirt whisking a scant drapery about his lizard-like, 
obtrusive spine. At intervals he took a sip of 
pinkish liquid from a glass that was on the mantel- 
piece, and, tilting back his head, emitted a pro- 
longed bubbling sound — he was gargling. 

All his life he had been delicate; but his Uncle 
Bullivant, though handicapped like himself, had 
contrived to live to the number of eighty years 
chiefly, it was reported, through airing his socks, 
not only on the comparatively rare occasion of 
the return from the weekly wash, but every day. 
Though, as he sometimes murmured, "alas! not 
a strong man," there was yet sufficient tenacity 
of purpose in him to insist upon the daily perform- 
ance of this — almost religious — rite. Presently he 
knew he should hear his wife come whirring up the 
stairs — she always mounted two steps at a time — 
and her knock at his door. This was her share 

91 



92 The Thrush and the Jay 

of the ritual. She was uneasy until he came down, 
partly, perhaps, because she wanted her breakfast. 
Whatever the cause, however, the note of anxiety 
in her voice was soothingly delicious to him as 
she asked : 

" Are you all right ? " 

She was so seldom anxious. 

"Exceptionally robust persons," his soft voice 
droned with pathetic fortitude in his mental ear, 
" are sometimes a trifle insensitive." 

He stepped to one side of the fire, which v/as 
beginning to scorch him, and the socks now hung 
leg downwards. 

He remembered his first meeting with his wife. 
He had every reason to remember it. She was 
the first woman who had ever attracted his atten- 
tion. Other women went past him like the in- 
visible air; but she had brought him, almost with 
a physical shock, to a realisation of her existence. 
Looking back upon it, and forward along its in- 
evitable path also, he concluded that " attract " was 
not the right word to apply to his sensations at all; 
rather she had " affected " him. She had, as a 
matter of fact, affected him most unpleasantly. He 
remembered the occasion very well; it was at the 
Opera. Her " motif," had he only realised it, was 
made plain in the nervous ten minutes that he spent 



Adversaries 93 



after he reached his seat, in wondering who would 
occupy the empty place at his side, whether who- 
ever it might be would come in time, and finally 
in the certainty that whoever it might be would 
not. He was in no mood for listening to music 
when, with the first pitch darkness and triumphant 
crash of chords from the orchestra, she had stumbled 
against himx and dropped into the vacant chair. 
She kept surprisingly still after her effort, and 
seemed, from the tranquil warmth her nearness 
shed around him, to be listening with heart-whole 
enjoyment. It was unconscionable. For him the 
mood of concentration had to be difficultly built 
up, and it was now altogether broken. He fumed, 
he ground his teeth, he thought of biting things 
to say. The overture and act were interminable. 
His irritation, indeed, was in danger of expending 
itself, when, on drawing a hard breath through 
his nose in a final paroxysm, " Shsh ! " came lightly 
from her. It was an infamy. 

Illumination revealed his tormentor. She was a 
low-browed, dark-haired, bright-eyed creature, and 
the music had brought a glow into her cheeks. She 
flung back the cloak from her broad shoulders and 
surveyed the house. Was there no way of indicat- 
ing his hatred and contempt '^ There was. He 
could not find his programme. His head, craned 



94 The Thrush and the Jay 

and bobbing in a variety of exaggerated searchings, 
at length attracted her attenfion. 

"Are you looking for something?" she asked 
him with a full glance from careless eyes. 

"My programme" — his voice came strangled; 
" I think you are sitting on it." 

" Oh, I'm sure I'm not." 

He fought for self-control. " Excuse me, but I 
laid it on that chair. You came late " 

She was on her feet in a moment. 

" Oh, please don't remind me of all my faults 
at once! I'm so sorry! " She was full of silly 
laughter. On her chair was the programme. 
Doubly convicted of gross behaviour, she might 
have humbled herself now; but she lacked such 
grace. 

" If that is your programme, by the way," came 
her next remark, "what has become of mine f I 
had it in my hand when I sat down." 

She rose again and searched elaborately. No 
second programme was to be found. 

" You know, I think that must really be my 
programme I've given you." (" Given " was 
good.) " Do you mind if I look at it for a 

moment."^ I hadn't a chance, coming late " 

There was her character in a nutshell. She 
acknowledged her fault and was not bowed down 



Adversaries 95 



by it. He had had to yield the fruit of his vic- 
tory. Certainly he remembered the affair too well. 

She had not remained long in quietness after 
that. Her roving eye had soon discerned friends 
across the balcony, and out she must plunge to 
talk to them. He found that he knew them too. 
In less than a minute they were all coming towards 
him, and his tormentor was laughing noisily while 
she proclaimed : 

" Do introduce us! We've been having a back- 
street row about a programme." 

How coarse was her phraseology! Even while 
they were engaged her voice had never pleased him. 
It put him in mind of the red-faced men that slap 
comrades on the back in the street with the adjura- 
tion, "Cheer up, old blighter! You're not dead 
yet." Her casual tone had the same offensive 
exuberance about it. He never heard it without 
a desire to draw his shoulder-blades together. 
Fortunately for her, she was unobservant of these 
things. 

" Exceptionally strong people," the inward voice 
droned, " are seldom really observant of detail." 
All the same, he wished he could hear her voice 
and knock at that moment. He missed the morn- 
ing observance; it was the happiest thing in his day. 

He completed his dressing, and, having risen 



96 The Thrush and the Jay 

two or three times on the balls of his feet " to rest 
the spine," applied his pince-nez to his nose, and 
went downstairs. 

The clock in the hall struck ten as he went into 
the dining-room. 

His wife was there. She was reading the paper 
in the full flood of air and sunlight from the open 
garden door. 

"Hullo!" she said, not without friendliness, 
" I thought you were never coming. I went on." 
She indicated the scooped egg-shells that flanked 
her plate, the stained cup, the toast-crumbs — she 
had breakfasted without him. It was unpre- 
cedented. 

" I have become accustomed to hearing your 
knock," he said very gently. " I fell into a 
reverie." 

He cleared his throat with a sudden self-con- 
sciousness. 

" I'm afraid the cofi^ee is cold," said his wife, 
laying a large hand on either side of the cofi^ee- 
pot. "Shall I ring for more.?" 

" If you please," he said, wrinkling his lips. 

Her conduct, so lacking in refinement, so preg- 
nant with reproachful criticism of himself, should 
not receive the encouragement of a counter- 
demonstration. 



Adversaries 97 



"What a delicious morning! " he said. 

" It was, an hour ago. It's clouding over now." 

He ate in silence. 

Presently the open window aroused his notice. 
He could see the bright wind lift the little front 
locks of his wife's hair. He would appeal to her 
better nature. He shivered slightly and turned up 
the collar of his coat. 

" Do you feel cold.^ " came her voice, solid and 
committal as a town crier's. 

"Not at all. Nothing to speak of. A trifle. 
Pray do not close the garden door on my account." 

It was closed menacingly without a slam. He 
wished she had slammed it. It would have been 
more like her. He turned down the collar of his 
coat. He would try again. 

" Is there anything of interest in the paper this 
morning.'' " 

She held it towards him at once. 

" Nothing whatsoever," she said. 

He folded the paper into a convenient shape 
with several sharp little taps. What a rummage 
she always made of it! Just as he was preparing 
to read a paragraph aloud to her, she got up and 
said : 

" Thanks so much, but I've read that already. 
I'm going out." 

G 



98 The Thrush and the Jay 

She went towards the door. Half-way she 
paused and, turning, said with an air of sudden 
resolution : 

" Do you intend to play this game for ever? " 

" I beg your pardon ? " 

" I asked if you meant to play this game for 
ever? " 

"What game? " 

*' This game, playing at being polite when we're 
hating each other really. I'm sick of it ! " 

" I'm sorry that you find my manners offensive." 

"Offensive!" She grew suddenly noisy; she 
was bound, he supposed, sooner or later, to make 
a noise. 

"Offensive!" she cried. "It's unspeakable, 
it's infamous, it's murderous, it's brutish ! You're 
strangling and stifling me. I thought when I 
married you it'd be like looking after a child, 
helping and mothering you and cheering you up. 
But it's not, it's not. Do you know what it's like ? 
It's like being tied to a spancelled goat, a sick, 
bleating, limping, spancelled goat. He won't 
jump and he won't let me jump. You're loath- 
some, you're horrible, you ought never to have 
been let loose on a healthy world! I am going 
to get some fresh air. Perhaps I'll never come 
back! " 



Adversaries 99 



She flung out of the room with amazing 
violence. 

He was not quite sure that she caught his 
" Really, you seem a little odd in your manner 
this morning! " 

"Brutish? Loathsome? Spancelled goat?" 
He repeated them to himself. She was absurd. 

He finished — he felt he owed it to himself to 
finish — his breakfast. He went into his study. 
As usual, she had bothered him for the day. 

" It's impossible, impossible," he said, as he 
always said. " I can't settle to anything." 

This time, strangely, he found that such was 
indeed the case. Her threat kept ringing alter- 
nating peals in his brain. Did she mean it? Did 
she not mean it? Would she come back as if 
nothing had happened? Would she not come 
back ? If not, was he glad or sorry ? If so, was 
he sorry or glad ? It bothered him all the morning. 

At lunch-time she had not returned. The meal 
was laid soberly for one. He did not like to dis- 
play his ignorance to the parlourmaid by asking 
when "the Mistress" was expected. 

He returned to his study. Again the agonising 
doubts repeated themselves. Ding-dong, ding- 
dong. It was maddening. He opened the door 
and listened to the silence of the house. He wished 

G 2 



loo The Thrush and the Jay 

he could have heard her distant humming and 
have shut the door smartly on it with an air of 
being disturbed, as he had done the day before. 
He felt unaccountably restless. What ought he 
to do about her.? 

He found himself padding through the house. 
He looked out of the window and wished 
that he could see her coming, advancing up the 
street, flowers in her arm, looking towards the 
window and meeting his eyes, and at the identical 
moment stepping into the road to avoid walking 
under a ladder placed by painters against the 
wall. How he would have enjoyed now moving 
back with a frown into the room and saying to 
her quietly afterwards, " It would be better for 
you to chew your food properly than to avoid 
going under ladders." 

A strange unaccustomed sense of isolation began 
to creep upon him. He thought he would take his 
tonic. He was not sure what he would do. It 
was most inconsiderate, " most inconsiderate " — 
he repeated it aloud — of her to go off in this sen- 
sational way. He would do his breathing exercises. 
He went into the dressing-room and locked the 
door. 

It was nearly tea-time when his wife came home. 
The house seemed strangely quiet to her. She put 



Adversaries loi 



her sunshade into the hall stand with sudden fur- 
tiveness, as if she feared to make a noise. She was 
filled with vague apprehensions. What a bad- 
tempered beast she had been, flouncing out of the 
house like that! Had he been terribly hurt and 
lonely all by himself .'' After all, he had never been 
strong. 

She should have come back sooner. The vague 
anxieties that tormented her in the mornings came 
crowding upon her. Was he all right ? The house 
seemed much too still. 

She tiptoed to the drawing-room. No sign of 
him there. The study then. She called softly. 
No answer. How he did keep things up! She 
tried with the thought to stifle the alarm within her 
breast. She raced upstairs. On the landing she 
called him. There was no reply. She knocked 
at the dressing-room door. Still only silence. 
She turned the handle. The door was locked. 
Trembling, she stood pressed close against the 
frame. She tried to quiet the drumming of her 
heart, to listen, only to listen! She held her 
breath. 

Through the shut door at length a small strange 
sound came to her. A prolonged bubbling sound. 
He was gargling. 



MISS DALY'S 

There was a room I used to know, 
Ever so many years ago, 
In a draggled street of a shattered town; — 
A room that was neither grey nor brown, 
But all dismally warped and worn, 
Broken and propped and frayed and torn, 
A room to which the sun never came 
Save a finger's touch on the window frame 
Where grew nasturtiums coloured like flame. 

Over the way was a public-house. 

Where laymen and red-coats used to carouse, 

(A hushed murmur that swelled to a roar 

As each new-comer passed the swing door), 

And at eleven each night to the chime 

The potman would indicate closing time, 

By their coat collars and his own knee, 

Flinging them very riotously 

Out of their splendour into the street. 

And they, as soon as they found their feet, 

Would turn and batter the door in heat. 



Miss Daly^s 103 

But on warm nights while the town was still 

I would sit and lean on the window-sill, 

And feel the softly caressing air. 

And smell the nasturtiums growing there, 

(A peppery unforgettable smell), 

And think the thoughts I could not tell, 

And hear a tram pass the end of the road 

With a hum like a bee with a honey load. 

While round the lamps little moths together 

Danced like snowflakes in gusty weather. 

Those nights I'd jump at the noise of it 

When I heard men clearing their throats to spit. 

Where at a corner in a crowd 

They talked in whispers and laughed out loud ; — 

But I felt the wind caress my face, 

And the world still seemed a beautiful place — 

The world still seemed a beautiful place. 



Ah^ nights of dreams and of youth^s surprise 

When all is strange to enchanted eyes; 

And every echoing sound a barque 

To bear rich cargo out of the dark, 

Out of the shadows to one a-wait 

With parted lips and heart elate; 

When the crowded roofs and the sky above 

Hide worlds of glory and worlds of love; 



I04 The Thrush and the Jay 

And night that circles to dawn mayhap 

Will cast a miracle in your lap ! 

So did I sit and hear the hours 

Fall sombrely from the city's towers. 

Above the hidden nasturtium flowers. 

And then Miss Daly would bring the lamp, 
And a loaf of bread that was new and damp. 
And a dish of jam that was sweet and rosy. 
And a pot of tea in a dusty cosy, 
And leave me at last to sup alone. 
And to know that my dreams were done and 
done. 

Could I, the now and present I, 
The dim streets at night pass by. 
And glancing through a window see 
That slender self that once held me. 
Sitting solitary there 
With the lamplight on her hair. 
Drinking tea and eating bread, 
Bending o'er a book her head, 
When she should have been in bed — 

Should I press close to the pane 
Eager to be young again, 
Yearning for some hidden truth. 
All impatient of my youth .f* 



Miss Daly's 105 

No; ah, no; ah, no! I'd cry, 

" Hold your fortune ere it fly, 

Speeding time your dreams will rive. 

Dreaming is to be alive. 

This your golden hour of play. 

This your shining break of day. 

This your April is and May." 

Still into the dark I look^ 
Still must think some secret nook 
Holds complete felicity, 
And some day will give it me. 
Foolish, nay^ for well I know 
Dreaming things can make them so. 
All the wonders time has wrought 
Wore the tender wings of thought. 
Hush, the wings are everywhere 
Filling the night-clouded air. 
As they filled it long ago 
In the room I used to know; 
Filling it as once they came 
At the open window frame. 
Where the spiced nasturtiums grew 
With their flowers of hidden flame. 
Filling it with thoughts of you, 
Dearer than can e'er come true. 



ROMAUNT DE LA ROSE 

Galatea, it was, who told me. 

She came into my room one bedtime, as girls 
do when they are staying in a house together. It 
seems to be the most prolific hour for confidences. 
Possibly dressing-gowns and unbound hair have 
something to do with it. 

Not that there is anything particularly con- 
fidential about this story. It might have been told 
in any leisured place, on a slowly attained summit, 
or over muffins by the fire; but somehow the edge 
of a bed and Galatea the teller gives the perfection 
of appropriateness. Of course that is chiefly on 
account of Galatea. She is an entirely pleasant 
thing to look at in firelight and a kimono, and 
she aims her little shafts so accurately that they 
never glance aside and prick the hearer as others, 
less accomplished, do. She makes one feel slow- 
witted and amiable by contrast, so uncompromis- 
ingly does she view her fellows, and all the while 
she is charming in accent and gesture, and graceful 
as a bird. She accompanies her criticism too with 
a wide smile that belongs to her alone, a smile so 



Romaunt de la Rose 107 

utterly devoid of considered malice, hidden 
thought, as to deserve, almost, the exclusively 
masculine epithet — grin. 

We had not met for several months, and the 
tale of the summer's campaign was still far from 
completion, when I saw Galatea's mouth begin- 
ning to stretch sideways in the manner I have 
described. 

'' Oh, and I must tell you about Lai's," she said. 

We both knew Lai's. I had even gone so far as 
to have been at school with her. She was a rather 
fat, soft-voiced girl in those days, with blue, dark- 
fringed eyes, and pitch-brown hair, 

" Chubby as ever.'' " I inquired. 

"Chubbier," said Galatea. 

She grew thoughtful for a moment, then she 
said — 

"It is a mystery to me what men can possibly 
see to attract them in a girl like that." 

Speculations of that kind, Tiowever, have always 
bothered Galatea. 

"We cannot all be perfection, can we? " I ask 
her nicely. 

" We can at least approach it," she replies. 

Encouraged, I go over and sit beside her. 

This then is the story. 

Galatea and La'is were staying down at Lis worth 



io8 The Thrush and the Jay 

together for some charity theatricals. I can see 
the house clearly, the wide shadowed rooms, flecked 
here and there with yellow splashes of sunlight, I 
can all but hear the voices and the lisp of muslin 
frocks, the interjected laughter. Almost I can 
smell the tobacco. I picture the boys and girls, 
on the long sofas and Persian rugs, intent for a 
few brief mornings upon belts of straw and ivy 
buds, busy with coloured paper, reels of wire, 
scissors, laurel boughs, everybody in high spirits, 
eyes bright, lips carmine, the atmosphere of chaff 
and flirtatiousness that is called for other reasons 
Pastoral Plays. 

It had been clear from the cast that there would 
be more than enough young men to go round. 

" So that," as Galatea put it, '' one did not have 
to over-exert oneself. Though anyhow," she 
added with a sigh, " undergraduates are getting 
too young for me." 

(For a moment I feared that we were going to 
digress fatally among those favoured others who 
have made haste to be born in time, but Galatea 
had herself well in hand.) 

Outside the cool house summer held the world 
entranced. On the downs the cornfields were 
steeped in it. In the garden the flowers stood 
subdued beside their pallid shadows. In the still 



Romaunt de la Rose 109 

warmth the leaves were breathless, the plum ripened 
and did not fall. It was wonderful, a spell binding. 

In the evenings after tea when rehearsals were 
over, Lais, Galatea, and the others used to walk 
on the downs, " as luckily the weather was too 
hot for tennis." 

Their walk led them by the old coach road above 
the chalk pit. I remember it well, a dyke with 
sides grass-coated and banked with green, that 
scars the smooth round shoulder of the down, and 
arrives in final extremity, I believe, at Portsmouth. 
By its side, but higher up the slope, for a little 
way accompanying it, as a foal might run beside 
a post-horse, is a much smaller track whitened by 
the feet of countless sheep, a narrow precipice- 
bordered path half circling a beech wood and 
vanishing at last in the delicious short turf of the 
hill-top. 

" You know the little path.-^ " said Galatea. 

Above it the brambles have woven a wall for 
cautious skirting. Below it the briars are wreathed 
in dangerous profusion, in June a galaxy of shell- 
like blossoms, but in August only the leaves are 
left — and the thorns. 

" Still rose bushes, even when the roses are dead, 
have a delicate peppery savour, a spice, haven't 
they.''" I suggested. 



no The Thrush and the Jay 

Galatea hugged herself; but she refused to be 
hurried. 

" Possibly Lais thinks so," she said. 

And Lais — well, while the rest of the girls filed 
by nimbly, holding their muslin skirts close about 
their ankles, Lais chose to walk very slowly on 
the edge of the green abyss. Lais had perforce to 
linger. It was no place for hurrying, if two 
were to pass that way abreast, and Lais had found 
a companion. 

Galatea described him to me. 

He was a fresh-complexioned young man, Cam- 
bridge, of course, with full-moon spectacles, and 
hair that shone like a new pair of tan leather boots. 
He wore grey flannel trousers and a dark blue coat. 
Bion, Galatea, called him, because he reminded her, 
she said, of the parsley that withers in the garden. 

Long after they had reached the top of the hill 
and had seen the long evening shadows barring 
the fields and the island shimmering afloat in 
the haze, they would see Lais and the young man 
coming quietly, he hatless with hands in pockets, 
she perhaps with a small branch in her hand. The 
others did not torment them. Galatea could lay 
a pretty hand on her heart and say that. They did 
not wait for them, or stay with them, or con- 
spicuously avoid them, not from the Charity in- 



Romaunt de la Rose iii 

deed that might be remembered upon Judgment 
Day, but simply because they were all at the time 
fully occupied with affairs of their own. " As a 
matter of fact we did not notice them." 

I do not know exactly when it was that they 
did begin to notice. I can imagine with some 
accuracy, however, the arch eyes and puckering lips 
that emphasised the discovery. Galatea was at once 
impatient of it. She disliked the intrusion among 
her trivialities of what has been called a deeper, 
sweeter, but in her opinion was simply a less 
irradiant strain. 

" Think of falling in love with a stray young 
man on a holiday! The prosiest thing ! " 

(I tried not to sympathise with Lai's, for I knew 
that that would spoil the story for me.) 

At first the affair did not seem serious. They 
were all doing the same thing more or less. It 
was not important that when Lais went gathering 
myrtle to make the nymphs their garlands the 
brown-haired undergraduate went with her to carry 
the basket. It did not matter who sat by whose 
side for " Up Jenkins," or who went in the motor 
and who walked, but when it was a division, a 
subtraction without variation ! 

At night, too, when Galatea went to sit on Lais's 
bed (as she was now sitting on mine) to enumerate 



112 The Thrush and the Jay 

the compliments for the day, annotated, as is 
fitting, with mocking laughter, Lai's would remain 
grave and dreamy, aloof, positively superior. It 
made things a little dull for Galatea to have no 
one to listen to her. Lais had been her hope. 
The other girls were unable to laugh properly at 
any time, it seemed. 

(I felt doubly flattered by her presence.) 

" It was not that I minded her trailing him 
about with her," Galatea explained. " That was 
all right; but for her to be in the same mawkish 
condition! " 

" But, my dear Galatea," I expostulated. " Even 
young women must fall in love some day! " 

Galatea, however, would not allow that poor 
Bion was necessity. She had never dreamed that 
Lais was anything but amused and interested. 
Very much amused and mildly interested. That, 
according to Galatea, is the only possible attitude. 

It was the last evening at Lisworth that opened 
Galatea's eyes to reality, and several other pairs 
of ejes too, she feared, in a startling and unpleasant 
way. 

" If it's scandal, Galatea," I admonished her, 
" it isn't fair to tempt me to listen to it." 

" You precious humbug," said Galatea. 

The play was over, it had been a great success, 



Romaunt de la Rose 113 

and to celebrate the triumph they had a Httle dance, 
an informal affair, just with lanterns in the garden 
and ices in the conservatory. Galatea was sitting 
out some dances, in the hammock, " because it 
was the most comfortable seat," when one of the 
dancers came up, looking for his partner. 

" Well, it isn't me, surely .-' " said Galatea, with 
bad grammar and a good conscience. (" For you 
know I think cutting dances rotten.") 

No, it was Lais he was looking for. 

The dark garden swallowed him. 

A different music floated from the drawing- 
room and another white shirt-front grew distinct 
in the gloom. (" I don't know why they should 
all have made for the hammock.'*" "Instinct," 
I said.) 

" Have you seen Lais anywhere.''" 

Galatea was presently consoling three shirt- 
fronts. 

"And has anyone seen Bion.'' " 

"Have they been missed in there.''" Galatea 
indicated with her voice the lighted windows of 
the drawing-room. They supposed not yet, any- 
how. Galatea decided to stay in the garden to 
keep Lais in countenance when she did come back. 
She smoked several cigarettes to keep herself warm 
and 



114 ^^^ Thrush and the Jay 

" I dare say those boys thought I was staying 
there to flirt with them." 

It was getting very late and Galatea was getting 
really anxious when a red spark and a ghostly 
shape beside it implied the approach of a couple 
over the grass. 

"Hullo!" said Bion, "we've been up the 
downs to look at the moon. No end of a night 
up there. Clear as daylight." 

He was most communicative. 

Lai's murmured to Galatea, "Is it very late.''" 

" Not too frightfully," said the consoling one. 

" I say, come with me, will you, Galatea.? " 

Scenting danger Galatea slipped an arm through 
hers and they walked into the house together. She 
noticed that Lais held her gown close-twisted. 
They found their room without encounters. 

Then Lais revealed herself. She opened her 
hand and the gown, or what was left of it, fell 
round her. It was torn to ribbons, to shreds, to 
flitters, and her arms were lacerated, scratched, and 
bleeding till they " looked like the plan of a railway 
terminus." 

"Good heavens, Lais, what has happened .f* 
Have you been fighting with a wild cat } " 

"You know the little path up the downs .f*" 
said Lais. 



Romaunt de la Rose 115 

Galatea knew it. 

Lais had fallen off it vertically, plumb through 
a rose-bush ! 

" We were an hour pulling the thorns out of 
her," said Galatea. " They were like quills upon 
the fretful porpentine." 

*' And what did Bion do ? " she asked. 

" Oh, he came and picked me up," said Lai's. 

Galatea could come at no earlier doing. Poor 
Lais on the narrow path ! 

" Bion thought I was killed," she said. " I felt 
myself falling and I put up my arms to save my 
face." 

(Mercifully!) 

She landed quite softly spread out upon the 
grass, and looking up — saw yards and yards of, 
white stuff tangled inextricably among those de- 
testable bushes. Detestable } But they saved her 
life all the same. She was distinctly plucky. In 
a little while she was smiling about it. Bion had 
thought she was killed ! 

" You know, Galatea," I said rather sternly, 
" if he had had his arm round her waist that 
wouldn't have happened." 

But Galatea scorned me. 

"Such a place to choose! " she said. 



H 2 



KINSALE 

Sing of a day of splendour, 

A day that you and I 

Lay on a mighty headland 

Between the sea and sky; 

Soft on the heather, 

On the warm hill-side. 

In the shining weather, 

Lay and talked together. 

Talked and laughed and watched the sea;- 

Where gulls with faint sad voices. 

Cries of battle in a dream, 

Hovered by the mackerel gleam. 

And great porpoises went rolling. 

Sleek and black in the blue tide. 

Blue and blue. 

Gold and white, 

I and you 

In the floods of light 

On the heather lolling; — 



Kinsale 

Clouds sailing high, 

Brisk waves splashing, 

Jewelled wings 

Of wild bees flashing, 

You and I 

Glad and gay as the summer sea, 

The open sea! 

How my heart rejoices. 

How my heart sings, 

To remember the faint voices. 

The white wings! 



II' 



EVENING MUSIC 

Under the alder trees 
With their gold tassels, 

Under the slender trees 
There I build castles. 

Silver the alder trees 

Silently sway, 
Where the still water is 

Quiet and grey. 

Quiet the alder trees, 
Hush'd the winds pass, 

Gold, from the silver trees, 
Powders the grass. 

Under the alder trees 
In the still evening, 

Under the slender trees 
There I walk dreaming. 



THE ATTIC ROOM 

My room is high above the trees, 
The ash leaves brush my window-sill. 
The breezes blow, the curtains fill 
Like sails of ships upon the seas. 

So out I sail across the boughs, 
Nor fear the dread abyss below. 
Where meriry sparrows, to and fro, 
Flutter and chirp and break their vows. 

I see beyond the earth's far rim 
The round sun sinking in the West, 
The winds of twilight are at rest. 
And all the whispering world grows dim. 

I, and the stars, and none beside 
To journey till the dawn grows red. 
World upon world above my head 
Wheeling through space with tireless stride. 



120 The Thrush and the Jay 

And watching them no course I keep 
Nor care which way my vessel goes, 
Forward or back, who cares? who knows? 
Not I, for I am fast asleep. 



VENGEANCE. 

All her life, it seemed to her, she had been 
dogged by small misfortunes. 

She was one of those pale women with long noses 
and grey eyes set close together at the top of them. 
Her fair hair was not really thin, but she had never 
been able to make it look pretty. She still wore it 
woven into the sort of knob that had been fashion- 
able when she first left school. She had tried since, 
many times, to alter it; but it had always refused 
to " go," or else her husband had ridiculed. That 
was one of the misfortunes. Other women were 
able to slide from one way of hairdressing into 
another, casually, becomingly, and without causing 
remark. Often when her arm, tired with long 
brushing, had fallen aching to her side, she had 
clenched her teeth in a very fury of disappointment. 

Then there were other things. 

At dinner parties the woman seated at her part- 
ner's left contrived always to be talkative and 



122 The Thrush and the Jay 

merry. She tried to persuade herself that she had 
a finer dignity and reserve, but that did not really 
console her for having to sit quietly, an island of 
silence in the midst of the chatter, while on either 
side of her she was aware of white collar and bur- 
nished head, red ear and thick jaw, munching. She 
seemed never to see the men's faces at all except 
when they leant back to laugh, and they never 
laughed with her. 

Even servants showed a want of consideration, in 
spite of her expensive gowns. It was always the 
jelly that was handed to her first or the fruit salad, 
never the creamy thing, and she had to help herself 
without demur. She loathed, she so envied, the 
woman further down the table who was saying 
composedly, " I'll have cream, please." She knew 
that if she sent a dish away she would get nothing, 
or some stupid accident would happen to irritate 
everybody. Once she had been the first to assail an 
ice-pudding, and it had ended in her lap ! There 
was also the question of coffee-cups. The other 
women's disappeared inconspicuously. Hers 
remained awkwardly in her hand, and she never had 
the courage to rise and put it down. Better to give 
up taking coffee altogether. 

Her aloofness oppressed her. Her funny story, 
if she ever dared to begin one, was cut short ere its 



Vengeance 123 

prime by some provoking incident; — the fire-irons 
would fall into the grate, or the dog imagine rats 
in the waste-paper basket; — the door would open 
to admit a telegram or the men up from dinner. 
Something — anything. Nobody listened to her. 
Sometimes she found herself wondering if she really 
did exist at all. Certainly she did not exist in 
other people's memories or imaginations. Her 
husband, a big florid man, jocular, bald, and well- 
liked, was not important enough for her to be 
favoured for his sake. His name, however, was 
familiar to everyone; yet she, who also bore it, had 
often to say it twice before it was understood, and 
it sounded a noisy, ridiculous name when it was 
spoken without confidence. Even her hostess once 
had stopped half-way through an introduction, and 
tightening a grip upon her arm, had said : 

"My dear, forgive me, but what is your name .f*" 
and then, '' Do you know, dear, I sometimes cannot 
even remember my own!" 

She distrusted that explanation. No wonder she 
was diffident. 

At parties she could be seen on the outskirts of 
every group, just beyond the orbit of distinguished 
guest, or game, or gossip, a little smile hanging 
its transparent veil over the pathos of her mouth. 
That was long ago. She is not like that now. 



124 ^^^ Thrush and the Jay 

It was some such series of small things, trifles, 
insignificant humiliations, and defeats, that accu- 
mulated a flood of stinging bitterness within her, 
and made out of what had originally been amiable, 
if vague, an aggressive and shattering self-assertion. 
Philip Montmorency Brown it was who precipitated 
the crisis. Philip, as you know, has been excep- 
tionally fortunate. He used to be an interesting, 
dreamy, cadaverous boy, with a resonant voice, and 
eyes like a pheasant's. He never had been able 
to remember people unless they were famous or 
likely to be of use to him. Invariably he failed 
to remember this pale, long-nosed lady with the 
pathetic smile, and she felt no resentment, she 
acquiesced, she did not desire to be scuffling with 
Fate, for, oh, a long, long while. Philip, however, 
was too much even for her. This is what happened. 

It was at a party near Campden Hill that they 
had the famous encounter. She had been ignored 
all the evening by everyone, of course, and by none 
more completely, radically, and thoroughly than by 
Philip Montmorency Brown. All the same, it had 
been a nice party, and she had enjoyed it in a 
practical, if not very exuberant way. The refresh- 
ments were good; she had found a chair early, and 
managed to retain it (to be left " standing about " 
was the epitome of horrors), and she had seen how 



Vengeance 125 

kind everyone was to Philip Montmorency, and 
what a delightful time he had had. She saw, too, 
how it had pleased him, and how his face wore 
an expression as satisfied as a pug-dog's after a 
meal. 

When she and her husband had said good-bye, 
and she was putting on her cloak in the hall, Philip 
Montmorency came out from the drawing-room, 
where he also had been making his adieus, and 
came bouncing down the stairs humming a little 
tune to himself, as if he had been bored up there 
and was happy to escape. 

It was the tune that did it. The ingratitude! 
The scorn of fortune's bounty! The lack of 
vision! But she did not express it to herself as 
that. To her this was with suddenness merely a 
very conceited young man, a man who wore his 
vanity upon his sleeve, and with an unwavering 
resolve she swooped upon him. 

" You don't remember me," she said, " but it's 
so long since I saw you that I feel like an old 
friend of the family." 

Philip, who was groping for his overcoat among 
the pile on a table, lifted his auburn head, and 
looked at her with his sweet and winning smile, he 
expected one of the kindly phrases that strewed his 
path like flowers. Standing so in the light, he had 



126 The Thrush and the Jay 

the air of a sleek Apollo. She surveyed him calmly, 
and finished her remark. 

" You are fatter," she said, " and your hair is 
not so red as it used to be." 

" Why ?" said Philip Montmorency. <' Why .?" 

She left him gaping. 

Her husband was thunderstruck. 

" What possessed you ?" he asked, as the taxicab 
moved away with them. 

'■'■ He'll remember me next time," she said, very 
straight-lipped and upright. 

"Remember you! I should think so! He'll 
get under the table!" 

That was the striking of the hour. It became 
for all time an example of her method. She is not 
ignored now, she is avoided; and she finds it no 
lonelier, and much more amusing. 



THE MOWER 

The rooks travelled home. 
The milch cows went lowing, 
And down in the meadow 
An old man was mowing. 

His shirt rank with sweat, 
His neck stained with grime; 
But he moved like the cadence 
And sweetness of rhyme. 

He moved like the heavy-winged 
Rooks, the slow cows. 
He moved like the vane 
On the roof of the house. 

The foam of the daisies 
Was spread like a sea. 
The spikes of red sorrel 
Came up past his knee. 



128 The Thrush and the Jay 

The poppies, the clover, 
The buttercups gold — 
A man that was dirty 
And twisted and old — 

But again and again 
Like an eddy he was, 
He moved like the wind 
In his own tasselled grass. 



WORTH THE MONEY. 

When he first caught sight of her she was 
standing among the palms at the edge of the 
gallery and trying, with both hands pressed upon 
the rail, to look into the restaurant below. Her 
dainty figure, and the little rosette of flowers under 
the brim of her hat, enchained his eyes, as the 
strains of the band, a-swim on a popular valse tune, 
entranced his ears. He was lapped in a warm sea 
of well-being. 

It was seldom that he spent eighteenpence on 
a luncheon. They gave him a sense of luxurious 
indulgence, these rare occasions when the bottle- 
glass doors of Soho swung behind him. He did 
not often dare such extravagances. 

" But after all," he would argue with a " pal," 
"what do all your scrapings amount to.^ Not 
more than nine-three saved in a week." 

Life was a tight fit whatever way you went 
about it. A man ought to burst out now and then; 
it did him good. Besides, he'd tried the a la carte., 
and you didn't save anything by it. Might just 



130 The Thrush and the Jay 

as well take the whole thing through. He knew 
them all — Potage, Raie au beurre noire, cotelette 
de veau, creme au chocolat — it was as good as 
travelling on the continent. One-and-six and a 
twopenny tip, and then for the "metch" at The 
Oval. It was worth the money. 

The girl, leaning now her elbows on the rail 
in contemplation of the scene below, was an added 
luxury. 

" Pretty cool ' chep,' keep a girl like that wait- 
ing," he thought. He eyed her admiringly. 

She glanced petulantly at her watch. 

" She don't half like it," he thought. 

She was obviously restless. 

From time to time she craned far over, to see 
the entrance door. Returning to her easier pose 
from one of these gymnastics, her eyes met his, 
and she frowned slightly. 

He was embarrassed at once. " Looks like the 
real thing," he thought. He tried to take no 
notice of her. 

" Don't want her coming after me," he en- 
couraged himself. He propped up his paper and 
ate rapidly. When he looked up again he thought 
at first that she was gone. His eyes soon found 
her, however. She had left the railing and 
appeared to be seeking a seat. She was clearly 



Worth the Money 131 

ill at ease. Again his eyes met hers, and this time 
she neither frowned nor looked away; instead, to 
his consternation, she came straight towards him. 

" Do you mind if I sit here.f* " she said, sliding 
into the chair opposite his. 

" Not at all. Pray take a seat. Delighted," 
he gabbled in his astonishment. 

Sitting half-turned away from him, she con- 
tinued to survey the room. An officious waiter 
holding a wine list turned towards them. Taking 
the menu card from beside the mustard-pot, he 
thrust it before her. What did Madame choose .f" 

" Thank you, but I am waiting for somebody," 
said the girl with dignity. 

The waiter withdrew. 

A silence settled upon the table. The young 
man wondered if he might pick his teeth. He 
decided not. 

She drummed fingers on the cloth. At last he 
ventured a remark — 

"Not chused to waiting about, I suppose.'*" 
he asked. 

She glanced near him. 

" No, indeed," she said in a smooth little voice. 

" I should think not," he agreed quickly, too 
quickly. 

The conversation promised to die again. 

I 2 



132 The Thrush and the Jay 

" I'm waiting for my husband," she said 
suddenly. 

"No! Reelly!" cried the young man. He 
had not thought of her as having a husband. 

" You don't suppose, do you," said the girl, 
with an air of amused indignation, " that I should 
wait for anyone else.'' " 

The young man was suffused with blushes. He 
had not anticipated that his speculations about her 
would thus accumulate and explode as it were upon 
his head. 

"Why, I hardly " he began. " I beg your 

pardon. I'm sure I never — " 

But she was not offended. She laughed. 

" I meant that you didn't suppose I should let 
anyone but my husband keep me waiting, did 
you.f" " 

He laughed, too. 

" Rather not," he said enthusiastically. 

" He isn't usually as late as this," the girl went 
on. "I was a tiny bit late myself. I'm afraid he 
may have been and gone away again." 

" Oh, come," said the young man, earnestly 
concerned, " he wouldn't do a thing like that." 

" He might," said the girl. " If I'd twopence," 
she added unexpectedly, " I'd ring him up and 
find out." She became suddenly expansive. " It's 



Worth the Money 133 

the stupidest thing. I've lost my purse. When I 
got out of the 'bus, I missed it. I don't know 
whether it was snatched or simply that I dropped 
it. It's too ridiculous. I made sure my husband 
would be here when I arrived. I can't think what 
can have kept him. If I weren't so anxious, I'd be 
glad he was late. His lateness against my purse, 
you know. It makes it fairer. But really, it's too 
tiresome," she drummed her fingers. " I haven't 
a penny. I'm helpless." 

"Look 'ere," said the young man, "don't you 
worry. I should be only too 'appy to advance you 
the twopence if it'd be of any assistance to you." 

" Oh, thank you," said the girl warmly; "but 
I couldn't dream of letting you." 

" Only too 'appy to oblige you in any way." 

" Oh, but I mustn't." Her fluttering hesitancy 
was pretty to behold. 

" Don't be proud," he admonished her. " It 
won't make no difference to me, reelly. You can 
pay it back when you like." 

She shook her head. 

The waiter hovering with his bill reminded him 
of the time. 

" Hullo," he said, " I'll be late for the ' metch » 
if I don't look out. I must be getting on." 

He unhooked his threadbare overcoat from the 



134 ^^^ Thrush and the Jay 

stand and struggled into it. Then he came back 
to where she sat. 

" I say," he said, *' what are you going to do .f* " 

*' Oh, I'll just have to sit and feel hungry," she 
said. 

He couldn't bear that — the pangs of hunger 
rending that dainty frame while he had gorged 
himself! He would "chuck" the " metch." 

He took out his only silver coin (he had no 
gold ones) and laid it upon the table. 

"Look here," he said, "take two bob. Then 
you can 'phone and 'ave your lunch, and a cup 
of cawfFee and what you like. Do?'' 

He pushed it towards her. 

"Oh, I couldn't," exclaimed the girl; "it 
wouldn't be fair." 

" That's all right," said the young man. " I'll 
never miss it." 

" Oh, but I'll send it back to you! " her fingers 
touched the coin. 

" That's all right," said the young man. " Any 
time you're passing." 

" Thank you most awfully," said the girl. 

" You're welcome," said the young man. 
" You're welcome, straight, you are." 

He hesitated for a moment; then leant across 
the table and said, in a burst of confidence — 



Worth the Money 135 

" I'd rather 'ave talked to you than 'ave gone 
to the Oval any day. Straight I would." 

His eyes met hers. At the same moment he 
became aware of a big man with a menacing scowl 
who was threading a path towards them among 
the tables. The young man became upright. He 
had decided to wait no longer. " Good after- 
noon," he said. 

He fitted his bowler hat on and made for the 
stairs. He heard her hailing the new-comer. 

" I've been waiting hours for you," she cried. 
" I've had nothing to eat. How could you be so 
late } I lost my purse coming here, and I've had 
such a miserable time." (The young man had dis- 
appeared round a bend of the stairs.) — " Oh, and 
I've borrowed two shillings from an absolute 
stranger! " 

" The deuce you have," said her husband, 
sitting down in the young man's chair. " You 
ought to be a company promoter! " 

" And I don't know his name and address. I 
forgot to ask him. Do run after him, quick, and 
give him his two shillings back." 

" I'm damned if I do," said her husband. " I 
want my lunch." 

He picked up the menu card, and the waiter 
advanced with the wine-list. 



TO M. M. R. 

There stands a willow by a stream 
In pensive green and silver grace, 

Quiet she stands, as in a dream; 

But when the breezes dart and chase 

The ripples, and the rushes quiver. 
She stoops and kisses her own face 

Reflected in the flowing river. 



So when you turn your eyes our way. 
Moved by a little thoughtful wind. 

You see about you every day 
The dawnlit Eden of your mind 

Where many lovely shadows pass. 
Since you in us your beauty find : 

The world is but your looking-glass. 



136 



THE DAISY FIELD 

A FIELD of daisies white and green, 

The fairest thing my eyes have seen, 

A field of daisies that the sun 

In silence lays his lips upon. 

It is a pleasant place to play 

From dawn till dark on a summer's day. 

Till the mower with a frown 

Comes and cuts the daisies down. 

O happy daisies! Men have sung 

A thousand years your fields among. 

Have looked and loved and longed and dared 

While you their joys and secrets shared, 

Nor you nor they have turned to see 

The mower toiling ceaselessly! 

Come, my beloved, it is day, 
The mower still is far away. 



138 The Thrush and the Jay 

Fear not; but though we wander far 
To lands where many wonders are, 
To lands that only lovers see, 
The mower strides as fast as we. 

Fear not! For we shall dreaming lie 
'Neath daisies, 'neath a summer sky, 
Hearing Life's murmur overhead 
(Who knows what is it, to be dead?) 
Talking of all that we have seen 
Up in the world of white and green, 
And maybe with a bated breath 
Saying, " 'Tis Life we fear, not Death." 



GETTING THE SACK 

She was wearing a pink silk hat — unvarying 
formula of feminine Aveakness — and the pointed 
chin that I caught sight of beneath it proffered no 
contrary evidence of strength. I judged from her 
general air that she was pretty — pretty and dark. 
Her companion, seated opposite to her, with elbows 
resting on the little table, was a bulky man, with 
promise of exceptional corpulence in the strained 
back of his prosperous city coat. On his forehead 
he wore a curl, a curl that might have been beauti- 
ful in another place, a curl like an upturned shell; 
but which made, as it was, an entirely ludicrous top- 
knot for his cropped head and bulging neck. He 
was not what one would call attractive. 

So much I took note of in the necessarily rather 
conscious stare with which one surveys a tea-shop 
in search of a seat. 

My choice was finally of the table next to theirs, 
for it was the only vacant one beside a wall, and as 



140 The Thrush and the Jay 

I moved to my place, the wearer of the pink hat 
looked up for a moment, and I perceived that she 
was crying. 

It gave me a feeling of keen discomfort to see a 
grown-up person crying in public — crying, there- 
fore, with a grief that had gone beyond control. I 
was glad for her that she had a friend. A man so 
fat as that, I thought, cannot but be kind. I felt 
that it was in his power to comfort her. 

" What am I to do.f* " she was saying. " What 
am I to do.f* " Her voice was husky with tears. 
Through the light clatter of the tea-shop I heard 
the voice of her friend, subdued also, and very 
steady. 

" You should have done what I told you," he 
said. 

" But it was impossible. I assure you, it was 
impossible." There was something agonised in 
the stifled voice. 

" You could have come if you had wanted to," 
he said. 

I glanced over my shoulder for another look at 
him. The need for secrecy — or at least for quiet- 
ness — seemed to have taken the responding 
emotion from his voice. Anyhow, I missed the 
consoling note. I wondered what the relationship 
was between them. Clearly the bond was a close 



Getting the Sack 141 

one; I could tell that from the way he leaned on his 
elbows. He seemed to be putting all his weight, 
physical as well as mental, into what he had to say 
to her. He was certainly in grave earnest. Prob- 
ably, I thought, he has always loved her and she 
seeks him, when things go badly with her, for 
advice, and the courage to go on living that, when 
life is hateful, only admiration can give. Perhaps, 
with his strength, he does not need to make his 
emotion articulate. Perhaps the rock-likeness of 
him is consolation in itself. All the same, I wished 
he would be a trifle agitated, grip her hands and 
say, "Don't cry, my darling, for God's sake don't 
cry." I fancied she would be glad of the outburst 
too. I waited for it hopefully. 

The gentle sniffing went on. 

" You don't know w^hat a position you're placing 
me in. You don't know what it means to me." 

" You should have thought of that before," 

It came to me, with an ugly shock, that I had 
been quite wrong. There was not a particular 
kindness about the man. There was, on the con- 
trary, a something sinister and deadly in the 
enforced quiet of his voice. 

" I suppose you know what will become of me."* 
Pve got to make a living somehow." 

" That's none of my business." 



142 The Thrush and the Jay 

" You don't want to give me a chance." 

"That's not true." 

" Yes, it is; yes, it is. (There was nothing com- 
bative in these contradictions, only the dreary repe- 
tition of a fact.) " You know I shan't be able to go 
on with my lessons now. You don't want me to 
get on. You don't care. You never did." 

Still the quiet, incessant tears. 

" Yes, I did. Didn't I pay for you } " 

(A sniff.) 

" Didn't I arrange everything.'' " 

(A sniff.) 

" Listen to me. I don't think you will get on, 
and for a very good reason," 

" He said I had talent," came through the 
pocket-handkerchief. 

"Talent! " He blew contemptuously. "That's 
not the point. If you want to get on, my girl, 
you've got to work. It doesn't matter what it is, 
music or dancing, it's just the same as business. 
If you're going to succeed you've got to stick at it. 
You've got to concentrate, see.^* " 

" How can I concentrate when you keep wo-rry- 
ing me.? " 

" I've never worried you." 

" You have wo-rried me," the word came 



Getting the Sack 143 

shakily. " Why last night " (she took the hand- 
kerchief from her face with a quavering animation) 
" there I was dressed nicely and looking nice and 
able to get on; but if I'd thought about you for a 
moment I couldn't have got on. I'd have gone to 
pieces. I couldn't have sung a note." 

There came a pause, and I wondered if they were 
verging on a peace. Presently the man's voice 
resumed. 

" You're not straight, are you."* " 

The level remark was as astonishing to me as 
it was meant to be insulting to her. 

" What do you mean .'' " 

*' I mean what I say. You're not straight, are 
you? " 

" I don't under-stand." 

" Yes, you do. I'm telling you you're not 
straight." 

I fancied there was satisfaction in the voice. 

*' What time did you get that telegram.'' " 

" I've told you before, I got it at ten past 
six." 

" That's funny. It was delivered at the house 
at ten past five." 

" I didn't get it till six." 

" You weren't in the house when it came, then." 



144 ^^^^ Thrush and the Jay 

" Yes, I was. I tell you I was dressing for 
dinner." 

"Dressing for dinner at five o'clock! You're 
not straight, are you .'' " 

He waited. She was crying softly into her 
handkerchief. 

" I sent that message from the office round the 
corner. I saw the boy take it. Now do you 
understand.^ " 

I understood, at any rate, if she did not. He 
had suspected and meant to catch her playing 
false. Very easily he had caught her. I fancied 
he had not been sorry. 

" You left me at four-fifteen," he said. " That 
telegram asked you to meet me at seven. You 
didn't turn up." 

" I tell you I didn't get it till six." 

" You could have telephoned." 

" I tell you " 

He cut her short. He was not interested. It 
was all one what she told him. 

" Got any more tea .^ " 

" There's no hot wa-ter." 

He swung round in his chair and beckoned the 
waitress. 

" Here, miss," he said, holding out the jug, *' is 
the kettle boiling?" 



Getting the Sack 145 

His jauntiness was far more ruthless than an 
avalanche of oaths. 

The waitress took the jug, grinning responsively. 
Apparently the man had a charm that I, somehow, 
had missed. I was sorry for the pink hat in the 
corner. There was so little subtlety or power of 
attack beneath it. I could not imagine an expres- 
sion on the tear-smudged, oval face of greater 
intelligence than a smirk. I could picture her on 
that fatal day before yesterday tripping archly away 
from the fat man at four-fifteen, slipping into the 
nearest tube station to telephone : — 

" Is that you, Ernie.'' " 

"Don't be silly! " 

" I've got an evening off. The old man's busy." 

" Oh, you naughty boy! " 

And so, ingenuously, it was all arranged, and 
away she had skipped to meet her other " gentle- 
man friend." 

And now the reckoning. 

She was saying — 

" I hope sincerely you'll never be placed in such 
a position. I hope not indeed." 

How flat and inadequate the words were ! The 
need of not raising her voice made them mincing 
and genteel. Every circumstance handicapped her, 
deepened her helplessness. Here she could not 

K 



146 The Thrush and the Jay 

even make a scene. The waitress returned with 
the hot water. I asked her, as she passed me, for 
my bill. I heard the fat man saying — 

" I shall probably run down to Eastbourne for 
a few weeks." 

All that the pink hat was missing ! 

She was pouring out his tea now in mute 
quiescence. She had made a poor fight and she 
must submit. The game was up. She had had 
but one weapon — the weapon of tears — and 
it had failed her. Possibly it was not the first 
time that the fat man had encountered it. And 
I thought to myself how even the most heckled 
wife alive would have rounded and snapped at 
him before the end of such an interview. Tears 
she might have shed, sodden she might have sat, 
but sooner or later she would have said — 

" Stop talking about it, will you.'^ I've had 
enough of it," or : 

'' Do you realise that you are behaving like a 
brute.? " or she might have slammed the door (like 
Nora) and gone to call on friends. 

But the pink hat could only sit and cry. I 
wished that some sudden shaft might spring into 
her mouth. Something novel, dangerous, and wild 
to pierce his strong indifference. Her tears were 
so much water on a drake's back. 



Getting the Sack 147 

Leaving the pay desk I stepped into the street, 
and as I stepped a rhyme recurred suggestively to 
my brain. It seemed to summarise the obverse of 
a very melancholy situation. 

" I shoot the hippopotamus with bullets made of platinum, 
Because if I use leaden uns his hide is sure to flatten 'um." 

I wished that the lady in the pink hat could have 
tried platinum. 



K 2 



A FREED SPIRIT 

Upward I sprang, 

The earth shot from me like a stone, 

Upward I flashed alone — 

How the wind sang! 

My feet together pressed, 

My arms crossed on my breast, 

A shining spear, 

A quivering arrow from the bow of Death, 

I drew exultant breath, 

I knew no fear : 

Flame in my heart and hair 

I reached the upper air. 

I saw the throng 

Of those whose uniform is loveliness. 

Beauty of wing and dress. 

Beauty of song. 

Through them I swiftly went. 

My energy unspent, 

148 



A Freed Spirit 149 

Though there was one 

Cried out to me, beseeching me to stay, 

Scornful I took my way. 

Hawk to the sun. 

The Universe stretched out, 

I faced it with a shout ! 



Oh, I was strong! 

My body and my wings were as of steel; 

No flagging did I feel 

All space among : 

The blue deeps length on length 

Were challenge to my strength; 

My pinions beat 

Down the vast shadow distances of night, 

And triumphed into light; — 

Tireless and fleet 

I meant to see all things. 

Such strength was in my wings. 

And then it came, 

A star among the countless stars at last 

That might not be o'erpast, 

This world without a name — 

'Twas on the verge of night, 

I poised in my great flight. 



150 The Thrush and the Jay 

And saw a moon 

Rise honey-coloured in a purple sky 

And watch so tenderly 

The hills of June, 

All night, all thro' the night, while the hills 

slept — 
Down from my height I crept 
And hid my face and wept. 



THE SMALL DAUGHTER 

God does not fail in anything, 
The ring-dove's neck, the beetle's wing, 
The buds that turn from green to gold. 
The sunny perfumes of the spring. 
The coloured patchwork of the wold, 
The blue dusk dropping fold on fold. 
And all talk talked and stories told 
In the long evenings by the fire, 
And strength and laughter and desire. 

Dear, when you come to me and say 
Do this, do that, I must obey. 
Swift to interpret, to devise 
With all the gladness that I may. 
So can I face the trust that lies 
Within your wide exacting eyes 
(Your beautiful exacting eyes); 
Mending and fashioning, I know 
If you will have, it must be so. 



152 The Thrush and the Jay 

Do not be over harsh with me 

When (empty of all subtlety, 

Stupid and ignorant and shy) 

You find my small reality. 

When on a sudden grown as high 

And how much cleverer than I ! 

You put your games and nonsense by 

And find me also questioning 

And empty of all counselling. 

Ah, turn your puzzled glances then 
From the unresting ways of men, 
From tangled right and tangled wrong 
To where the brooks are loud with rain, 
To where the birds are glad with song. 
And with the world know you are young, 
And with the ageing world be strong. 
And unto God as faithful be 
As in these days you are to me. 



THE MULBERRY BUSH 

I. 

She will never forget the heady and all but un- 
controllable feeling of relief that danced within her 
when Mr. Stanton Murray (since deceased), 
having pressed his wet moustache upon her cheek, 
and, in sequence, upon the legitimate cheeks of 
his five children (she was a mere visitor in his 
house), had lifted his bag from the carved chest 
in the hall, and with rain-coat flapping and gravel 
crunching beneath his feet, had taken his way to 
the railway station. Until his large, strong hand 
had swung open the gate and shut it again force- 
fully behind him, they held themselves in check, 
there was many a slip 'twixt cup and lip, quite 
apart from those that disfigured the breakfast cloth, 
and they did not permit themselves to forget the 
morning that he had returned unexpectedly for his 
umbrella. With the clang of the closing gate. 



154 ^^^ Thrush and the Jay 

however, restraint went shrieking to the winds. 
The play-room rocked beneath the surge of small 
ecstatic Stanton Murrays. Whoever was in the 
swing swung until his toes recorded their prowess 
in black marks upon the ceiling. Whoever was 
upon the rocking horse spurred the dappled beast 
in loud triumphant jerks across the protestant 
linoleum. Whoever had a dispute to settle closed 
and settled it there and then. Mr. Stanton 
Murray's departure let loose a festival of anarchy. 
She was too young at that time to have made 
herself a theory; but her perceptions and preferences 
were acute. She had not been many hours in the 
Murray household without forming an opinion 
as to the value and function of the tall thing called 
" Father." Father was literally awful. His eye 
v/as like the eye upon the pillar that terrorised 
her dreams from the sign-board of the " Free- 
mason's Arms." He was Justice unblinded, and 
with no weights or scales to hamper the freedom 
of his sword-play. His tread, though heavy, was 
silent; his manner, though absent, was severe. He 
was a mixture of Blue-Beard and the Giant Grim- 
Bloodyman. He stalked through the house and 
garden like a plague. The young Stanton Murrays 
never knew the meaning of the word " black " as 
applied to Monday, for then it was that the 9.18 



The Mulberry Bush 155 

removed him gratefully to town (that was one of 
the advantages of living in the country), and they 
had invented and sang, strictly in private, a version 
of " Sally in Our Alley," which ran : — 

"Of all the days within the week I hate and loathe but 
one day, 
And that's the day that comes between a Saturday 
and Monday." 

There had been a debate in the nursery as to 
whether "hate" or "loathe" were the stronger 
word, so they had compromised and put both in. 
Briefly, this meant that on Sundays Mr. Stanton 
Murray was en famille for dinner and tea, as well 
as for breakfast. 

Breakfast on other days, though bad, was never 
quite so bad. The distraction of the morning- 
paper, together with the necessity of consuming a 
sufficiency of food before leaving for town, limited 
the scope of his exertions. But Sunday was a day 
of tribulation. It was a new-fashioned household, 
and there was no breathing space for prayers or 
armistice for church time, so all day long the noise 
of battle rolled. It seemed to begin with the first 
peeping light of dawn, when Mr. Stanton Murray, 
clad only in his admirable striped pyjamas, strode in 
the corridors and commanded one or other of his 
offspring, in a voice that was actually strengthened 



156 The Thrush and the Jay 

by the rushing of taps and roaring of cisterns, to 
*' Come out of the bathroom!" It persisted 
through breakfast, when porridge, whether burnt 
or lumpy, was consumed, not without tears. It 
swelled to a climax at dinner, when the clattering 
of a fork sounded in frightened ears like an 
avalanche, when an overturned glass caused the 
havoc of a tidal wave. There was always one 
scapegoat at least, who got no pudding; but in 
the roast-beef stage was bidden, " Go out of the 
room! " Terrible indeed to hear one's name so 
called upon. There was nothing convivial about 
dinner when Mr. Stanton Murray was at home. 
No one could fill up a milky glass with water 
then and call it " ginger-beer," no one could make 
a pipe of peace out of a crust of bread. A child 
could not speak to its mother without being told 
to make less noise, or to stop whining. There 
was always somebody who had to spend the after- 
noon in her own room. 

Tea-time brought a lull, for then father was in 
the drawing-room. All the same, his nearness made 
itself felt. They did not care to compete as to 
who could take the largest bite from a slice of 
bread, and the print that teeth left in the butter 
was no long spiritually satisfying. Vengeance was 
his, and he invariably repaid. 



The Mulberry Bush 157 

She remembers in particular one example of his 
austerity. She had come in on a spring morning 
heated from the chase with some of the other 
children, and found him and the grown-ups eating 
crystallised ginger. " Oh, give me some," ex- 
claimed a little Stanton Murray. " No, you shall 
not have any," replied father, " because you asked." 
And the stranger perceived with rounded eyes that 
this was not a joke. 

A less tough breed than his own children would 
have gone down before him. She herself felt in 
his presence frailer than glass; but they took his 
violence philosophically. Each victim in turn 
would make the comment, " It's always w^," and 
depart to be smacked or sent to bed with martyr- 
like resignation. She found, too, that the alarums 
of their life, though shattering, held yet the 
gloriousness of battle. As the sailor boasts his 
combat with the fury of storms and weevils, as the 
pioneer with rhinoceros and niggers, so did she 
find that her blest security was looked on with 
contempt by these hardy swashbucklers. They had 
their answer ready for her when she talked of peace 
with honour, warm baths, skipping school, choco- 
late after medicine — they told her she was spoilt. 
She was a mere land-lubber of family life, and knew 
nothing of its fiercer intoxications. 



158 The Thrush and the Jay 

Certainly these children remained uncowed. No 
surety of wrath to come could dissuade them from 
tearing clothes, wading in black mud with shoes 
on, from losing cap or glove or golosh in their 
morning excursions. Nor could it make less 
keen the joy of playing dodge round the house 
when a wind set all things slamming, and 
on occasion shattered both panes of glass in the 
wash-house door. Nor could it prevent them 
from capturing stray small boys, and putting them 
to extreme question in the nursery until the whis- 
pered word went round, " he's blubbing." They 
were indeed bold young imps to their father's 
Lucifer. Fortunately, and perhaps inevitably, they 
were inarticulate imps. If they had been less like 
him, they could perhaps have made plain their 
thoughts; but in that case, it is clear their thoughts 
would not have been the same, nor yet so salutary 
in the hearing. 



II. 



Sometimes they seemed to her unnaturally 
naughty. There was something so unreasonable in 
their alternating silences and vivacities. Why be 
dumb when you are simply wanted to show how 
nice you can be to a visitor } Why be uproarious 



The Mulberry Bush 159 

at five o'clock in the morning ? Why be morose 
when you are asked to play oranges and lemons ? 
Why bound like an acrobat when you have to be 
dressed in time to catch a train? 

For good or ill, she was forced to face the fact 
that she was now on the side of the parents. It 
did not seem greatly to matter what the method 
was by which she sought to "bring them up"; 
she saw that her children would certainly do things 
that she would not like, and that she would have 
to do things that they would not like. She wished 
they would live always at their highest level of 
sweetness and intelligence. As it was, she had to 
scold them. 

It was a point of honour with her not to be afraid 
of them She had ever a slavish longing to yield 
in anticipation of drooping mouth and puckering 
brow. But she conquered her weakness. She was 
the captain of her soul. She saw clearly that it is 
sometimes a moral duty to make children cry. 

Had Mr. Stanton Murray so braced himself.-^ 
She determined not to think about him. Maternity 
is not a state for moth-wing shades of meaning, 
moonbeam balances. Rather it is a series of 
emergencies. It needs swift decisions, boldness, 
dash. If necessary, the offender must be sent 
to bed. 



i6o The Thrush and the Jay 

She was eager that her children should not be 
" spoilt." (The word had rankled.) Her own 
faults were so plain to her. Would she have 
reached grown-upness, surer of her feet, she won- 
dered, more capable and independent, for the pre- 
liminary hardships .^ Had she lost something 
irretrievable in those light years of non-existent 
discipline.? The Stanton Murrays tip-toed upon 
her thoughts. She counted her losses. Chiefly she 
could never enjoy cold baths or salt with porridge. 
Still, she was sure that there were other things, 
too, if she would only think of them. Surely there 
must be some great benefit that accrued to those 
who had wept their golden youth into unconsoling 
ears .? Had they not a hardiness of frame, a physical 
vigour .f* Was it worth the misery .f* Almost 
breathless with the daring of it, she wondered if 
Mr. Stanton Murray had tormented his mind in 
the same way. Had he } 

On the whole, she believed herself to be a 
success. She was almost certain that her children 
liked her, and were glad when she came in. She 
was sure that they never wished her to be gone. 
She allowed herself to feel, in secret, that so bene- 
volent a tyranny as her own could not fail of 
appreciation. Possibly she swaggered at times. 
The abyss was made ready for her pride. 



The Mulberry Bush i6i 

It was a winter's afternoon. The children were 
waiting for her in the drawing-room. As she 
came downstairs to them, she could hear their cries 
of laughter. She opened the door and stepped 
into the room. Then she flushed, and her eye- 
brows drew together. They knew they were not 
allowed to riot in the drawing-room. 

On the floor the cushions had been flung, on 
the cushions the children were sprawling; whatever 
game was in progress she did not stop to inquire. 
Enough for her, bear-garden, pandemonium, con- 
duct unworthy of " nice little girl," or " any lady's 
child " (as the nurses say). She plucked the 
children from the cushions, and the cushions from 
the floor. It is probable that she shook them all 
a little. In the cause of order, civilisation, the 
law, she drove out happiness. If freedom meant 
merely licence — perhaps she was right. 

Through the tears, the words reached her, 
" Up'tairs, up'tairs." 

" Nonsense," she said briskly, but without anger 
(hers had been the victory). " You are not going 
upstairs again yet. You are going to stay here, 
and play with me." 

(An invitation to the sheep from the butcher.) 
The small person steadied itself on its heels, and 
looked at her. 



1 62 The Thrush and the Jay 

" I didn't say / wanted to go up'tairs again," 
it said. "I said I wanted you to go up'tairs 
again." 

This was full-circle, and it dizzied her for a 
moment. She beheld herself and the blonde wraith 
of Mr. Stanton Murray standing shoulder to 
shoulder. In the pitiless eyes of a child she had 
assumed the burden of ogre-hood. 

So here we go round 



BETHLEHEM 

I. 

Long ago and long ago 
In the dark days of the earth 
Came a little child to birth. 
Gentler did his mother find 
Patient beasts than human kind 
And travailed so. 

In the long unfriended night 
All the sweet flower-woven hay 
Breathed a summer where she lay; 
Through the broken roof the stars 
Showed her, as through prison bars, 
Gentle light. 

II. 

Mary, Mother, take thy rest 
With thy baby at thy breast, 
Happy thou that canst not see 
That so tender bud of thee 
ifl, 



164 The Thrush and the Jay 

Scourged and bruised and crowned with thorn, 

Crucified in agony, 

Mocked, forsaken and forlorn, 

Hanging on the bitter tree. 

{Keepy ah, keep from child of mine 

Such a lot as fell to thine.) 

Weep not, Mary, lift thy head, 
Christ, thy darling, is not dead. 
He so underfoot was trod, 
He so in the mire was pressed. 
That small feet might walk clean shod 
To the Kingdom of the Blest, 
All the joys thou gavest Him 
In the manger warm and dim 
He at last shall give again 
To the little ones of men. 



III. 

Love without grieving. 
Wealth without thieving. 
This world in laughter. 
Paradise after. 
Mary under her blue shawl 
Singeth in the ox's stall. 



THIS AND THIS 

This was summer, this was peace: — 
Scarlet-laden apple trees, 
Cows that munch the dew-grey grass, 
Boys that whistle as they pass, 
Flying flowers and gulls a-flap. 
Honey fields on Golden Cap, 
Earth a blue and shining thing 
To set the angels envying. 

This was summer and this came: — 
This was a city and is flame. 
This was corn and now is mud. 
This was water and is blood; 
The beloved and the lover 
Carrion for earth to cover. 
Youth and laughter and bright eyes 
The worm's rich prize. 



165 



printed in great britain bv 

Richard Clay and Sons, Limited, 

brunswick street, stamford street, s.e., 

and bungay, suffolk. 



THE CHORUS 

A Tale of Love and Folly 
By SYLVIA LYND 

Crown 8vo 6/- 

PRESS OPINIONS 

Mr. Edward Qarnett writes in The Daily News : — 
" Mrs. Lynd's clever novel . . . the real feat Mrs. Lynd 
has accomplished is in keeping all the values true. . . . 
There is a feast of femininity in her sharp pen sketches. 
. . , ' The Chorus ' belongs to that small class of novel 
which we need so badly." 

The Observer says : — -"A book to be thankful for. . . . 
Mrs. Lynd takes a definitely witty interest in life and 
people and things, and does not exclude a feeling for 
beauty." 

Mr. Gerald Gould writes in The New Statesman .— 

" Mrs. Lynd is witty, her epigrams, like diamonds, not 
merely sparkle but cut." 

The Daily Telegraph says : — "A notable debut. 
Plenty of witty chaff and good talk, a fund of shrewd 
observation of character and two triumphant portraits — 
the first novel that gives us all this rare." 

The Nation says : — " It is deeply true, this picture of 
youth's passionate intensity. . . . She has the rare merit 
of seeing things in their true perspective." 

LONDON : CONSTABLE & COMPANY Ltd. 

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